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The Essence of Modern Liberalism in One Sad Thought

Apropos of our latest discussion with some liberals who stopped by here to once again argue for the madness that it is so-called same-sex “marriage”, I came across this blog post describing a recent conference about religious liberty sponsored by the liberal Center for American Progress (CAP). The post discussed, with appropriate dismay, the not so shocking attitude of today’s liberals who really can’t be bothered by any strong claims of religious liberty, if those claims clash with today's reigning liberal pieties. The author quoted one Sarah Warbelow, who is formally affiliated with the homosexual lobbying organization the Human Rights Campaign (they are the folks who were so proud to host Ellen Page, a/k/a the cute little pixie actress who played Juno in that eponymous film, when Ellen just announced to all the world that she is a pervert), saying the following with respect to religious liberty:

“No one should be humiliated at the dry cleaners”

And this, I submit, is the essence of liberalism today – no one should get their feelings hurt, ever, especially by those who are religious and hold traditional views of morality and sexuality.

This blog has been highlighting the intolerant nature of the left for quite some time when it comes to this issue, and recognition by courts of so-called same-sex “marriage” is just bringing the left’s fasces out sooner rather than later – they want nothing more than to shut out religious conservatives from the public square and have everyone worship their false gods of equality and perversion.

Enough is enough – enough of their false equivalence between race and homosexuality, enough of the bad constitutional law that not only twists the commerce clause, but the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment in which much of our current constitutional mischief arises (let’s face it boys and girls – an amendment designed to protect former slaves should not be the basis for any sort of rights for women to kill babies, sexual perverts to redefine the meaning of words, etc.) And yes, let’s stand up and say this means private racist business owners should be allowed to discriminate against black (or other minority) customers; this is just what basic private property rights and freedom of association means.

People since time immemorial will get their feeling hurt, and yes, will sometimes get humiliated at the dry cleaners (or whatever the pre-modern version of said cleaners was back in the day) – government cannot and should not be in the business of making sure everyone’s feeling are O.K.

Comments (147)

Know how the liberals stridently claim that this will never lead to open acceptance of pedophilia? Well there has been at least one attempt not long ago by serious people to get that ball rolling. On issues like this and polygyny, they remind me of that character in many horror films that says "Bad Thing X isn't real Johnny" right as all of the signs point to Bad Thing X coming to kill both of them. They cannot imagine how one thing will lead to another and then when it does suddenly they'll insist stridently that they never opposed it in the first place.

Do you also oppose zoning laws, building safety codes, and other regulations that prevent people from doing what they want with their private property? Anti-discrimination laws only affect a small number of people, but there are tons of businesses that would love to be able to disregard government regulation in other areas. After all, no one is forcing you to live in an unsafe apartment building. You're free to search for a different one on the Free Market (tm).

On a different note, I don't know why so many American Christians have such a strong belief in private property rights. Even Locke seemed to recognize that property rights are not absolute, and there is very little in the bible to justify a Rothbardian worldview. American Christians are massively out of sync with the global church in this regard too, the Pope is a socialist and Christian Socialist parties exist in all sorts of countries.

Laws against homosexual conduct and marriage affect a significantly smaller percentage of the population than the broader body of anti-discrimination laws. For example, every employee of a company in compliance with said laws is liable for termination if they engage in any conduct which could bring action, credible or not, against the company. Something as simple as publicly stating religious beliefs on the job can be grounds for termination in order to avoid the perception that the company tolerates discrimination.

But really the case against forcing acceptance of homosexuality on employers and others isn't the same as forcing them to accept economic regulation on safety standards, zoning, etc. Specifically, you are forcing someone to go against their conscience in a meaningful way and there is a long history of across the political spectrum of opposing that except in truly extraordinary cases such as certain forced medical interventions to save children. Forcing a business to provide services to someone they don't want to serve is both forcing them to go against their conscience and a confiscation of their labor.

So I guess it's safe to say liberals are all about worker's rights today except where it comes to where and how workers can be forced to direct their labor. I wonder what the early labor movement would say about that...

"American Christians are massively out of sync with the global church in this regard too, the Pope is a socialist and Christian Socialist parties exist in all sorts of countries."

Just for your information, the Pope is not a socialist. He is a Peronist, from what I have read. In fact, the Church condemns socialism. Pope Leo XIII issued the famous encyclical, Rerum Novarum in 1891:

Stuff like this is why I think that much as civil marriage may be necessary, conservatives need to destroy it anyway in act of total war on the cultural front. It's getting to be time for conservatives to realize that in a war, sometimes you have to do things like burn all the crops you're leaving behind so the enemy cannot eat them. So I think that conservative republican from the midwest who mused about doing just that if gay marriage was forced on them has it exactly right. The problem is there are enough conservatives who will resist any such sacrifice and justify it to themselves as they're "protecting civilization" even as what they're really doing is supporting a mechanism by which cultural rot can be forced on them by the state.

I posted this elsewhere, but it seems appropriate here. A friend of mine was in a music program at a university when one of the faculty at a public conference announced that he was going transgender. The audience gave a standing ovation. My friend and a few others remained in their seats without applauding. They didn't boo or make cat calls or even roll their eyes as far as I know, but someone observed them not standing and applauding and the result was that he was called before a group of faculty and chastised for his offensive behavior and threatened his academic advancement unless he attended sensitivity training. Sadly, he acquiesced for expediency rather than going to the dean or finding a just remedy. This wouldn't have happened at a town meeting discussing housing safety regulations.

This is another example of the modern Test Acts that are upon us--Employers (like Mike T. mentioned) and academic institutions acting as proxy agents to enforce government policy of conformity to evil.

Stories like that are why Dunsany has no credibility when he makes it sound like we're the ones who aggressing and the poor liberals just might have to start fighting back. What makes this particularly ironic is that many liberals would not only excuse your friend's treatment, but they also tend to cite Orwell a lot. Despite the obvious fact that punishing him for insufficient enthusiasm at an impromptu public rally is literally the same thing as punishing someone for not joining in at a 2 minute hate against Emmanuel Goldstein. (Just wait until they read a little on his biography and find out that despite being a Socialist, Orwell directed 1984 at the contemporary Left)

It depends on what you mean by socialism Chicken. There is no question that the Church opposed the secular utopianism popularized by books like Looking Backward, but that has little to do with support for socialist redistribution. It seems clear to me that the current Pope is not a supporter of the free market and supports redistribution that I would classify as socialist. If you want to say that's not socialism I'm fine with that. It's just semantics.

" Specifically, you are forcing someone to go against their conscience in a meaningful way and there is a long history of across the political spectrum of opposing that except in truly extraordinary cases such as certain forced medical interventions to save children. Forcing a business to provide services to someone they don't want to serve is both forcing them to go against their conscience and a confiscation of their labor."

Jeff was making what I consider to be a fairly radical property rights argument. If I have a right do what I want with my property it doesn't matter WHY I want to do it. If the government has a right to regulate my use of my property then Jeff's argument fails. Period. As for your argument, I don't see why "moral" beliefs should be given the sort of special status you are describing. Why should a religious person get to do what they want simply because their values come from their religion? What if I really value making money? Why shouldn't my values be respected in the same way?

As The Masked Chicken already nicely explained, the Pope and the Catholic Church reject socialism (and really all economic "isms".) As for your broader point, to the extent you had one, of course all rights recognized by the state must be weighed prudentially against the common good -- which is why religious freedom doesn't include the freedom to worship Baal and sacrifice children, freedom of speech doesn't include the right to yell fire in a crowded theater, owning property doesn't mean you have the right to build a factory on it and dump toxic waste on your neighbor's property (well, actually you might have the right but the great economist Coase showed that if your neighbor's property rights are protected he can then sue you for damages so presumably you won't do something stupid like that), etc.

Mike T,

When fighting a real shooting war, I'm a big fan of General Sherman -- I'm just not sure that the analogy holds when we are discussing politics and the proper way to win political battles against our fellow countrymen. I agree that many seem almost mentally ill or in the grip of the devil -- but as Christians we need to always support laws that comport with the natural law. Abandoning children to the chaos of a world without the protection of civil marriage laws is something Lydia has discussed repeatedly and seems to me to suggest that we are doing evil to promote good -- a no, no in Christian ethics.

" If I have a right do what I want with my property it doesn't matter WHY I want to do it."

Well, let's say you own a knife. You may have the right to jam it in a light socket, but the, "why," certainly matters. You could jam it in to save someone else's life or to commit suicide. Intentions are one-third of the moral calculus.

Also, socialism is socialism. If the definition has morphed, then use some other term, because there would be two different phenomena. The Pope is not a socialist as the term has been classically understood (and you used no qualifiers in your original statement, so the default assumption was classical socialism).

So what you're saying is that you believe that if rights are not absolute, they are nothing?

And with regard to your last point, how about pacifism. Why should pacifists be exempt from combat arms? If the state decides to draft them and put them into combat arms, do you not support the state's prerogative to force equitable distribution of drafted citizenry among the various occupational skills to ensure fair staffing? Why should some rich white kid from a liberal hippie family not have to fight while a poor black kid who cannot articulate a reason to not fight faces a punishment going all the way up to execution if he refuses to fight?

I agree that many seem almost mentally ill or in the grip of the devil -- but as Christians we need to always support laws that comport with the natural law.

Then you have to justify how a marriage licensing system that recognizes things opposed to the natural law comports with it. I've yet to see you or Lydia explain how a system that supports both polygamy and homogamy fits that bill.

Abandoning children to the chaos of a world without the protection of civil marriage laws is something Lydia has discussed repeatedly and seems to me to suggest that we are doing evil to promote good -- a no, no in Christian ethics.

As I said, there are conservatives who will be convinced that they are doing good and the Lord's work even as they participate in a system that is objectively evil. By the way, one thing Lydia has never disproved even in threads where I've agreed with her that civil marriage can be good and something like it may be necessary in the long run is to actually prove that the system we have today actually confers rights and protections. Even Zippy is more or less on my side on the issue of whether or not a system that so effortlessly eviscerates all parental and spousal rights via easy divorce can called marriage since by its very nature it is dissoluble on terms starkly similar to an objectively extra-marital relationship.

Mike, you're always big on "war moves" that involve some kind of pre-emptive destruction. Hey,let's burn it all down because somehow (unspecified) that might help us to defeat our enemies. I will always disagree with you or anyone else who promotes such a policy with regard to civil marriage. *Both* as a moral *and* as a prudential/consequential idea, such a proposal is disastrous. The councils of despair usually are.

In this case, we can see that it is a disastrous and destructive proposal (joining in the attack and attempted destruction of civil marriage), and any conservative would be a fool to support it. Indeed, its attraction chiefly seems to lie in some vague notion of sticking it to evil American society, rubbing "their" noses (meaning everybody's noses) in what "they" have created, and, at most, a still vaguer notion of a new and better order arising like a phoenix from the ashes once we have participated in the destruction. No thanks.

It's a bizarre statement, as Sarah Warbelow (what a name) undoubtedly thinks racists, homophobes, and sexists should be "humiliated" not just at the dry-cleaners, but anywhere they go. This is even true if said attitudes had no practical implications; i.e. that the racist isn't going around acting racist and causing harm because of it. The problem isn't that liberals "can’t be bothered by any strong claims of religious liberty, if those claims clash with today's reigning liberal pieties.", because that's true of any group if you just sub out "liberal" for whatever other ideology you have in mind. Rather, they mask their assignment of societal privilege to themselves by taking this "universal tolerance" position that they don't even believe.

".) As for your broader point, to the extent you had one, of course all rights recognized by the state must be weighed prudentially against the common good --"

The limits you brought up all have to do with how harmful behavior impacts non-consenting parties, and they are consistent with a libertarian view of property rights. The idea that rights can be restricted simply to produce good outcomes is another matter, and can be used to argue in favor of anti-discrimination laws insofar as they serve the public good. You might think that laws designed to protect gays produce bad outcomes, but that is not a rights based argument, and you really shouldn't pretend that it is. It's an argument based on what sort of impact you think such laws will have. Either people have a right to use their private property and do what they want with it or they don't. Nozick and other great libertarian understood this, and you can't weasel out of the implications of your view by discussing non-consenting parties.

"Also, socialism is socialism. "

Wrong. If you're that ignorant I don't want to waste my time arguing with you. Semantic debates are meaningless.

Let's suppose civil marriage and all of the attendant laws were liquidated tomorrow. What is the most likely outcome for the bottom 40% of America? Business as usual since they are already statistically not participating in it. Most of their kids are already born outside of the protection of civil marriage anyway, so any argument predicated on protecting the most vulnerable children via civil marriage is lost on that demographic.

But given the choice between a pluralistic, lowest common denominator, state-enforced system that homogenizes all practices into one system versus a chaotic marketplace filled with different religions and groups doing as they believe I'll take the latter. The current system is giving us the marital version of Obamacare and no one likes it except those people who profit from it.

The reason I am willing to end the system outright instead of pretending that it can be reformed is that I focus on the practical reality here. You probably have more potential voters willing to dissolve the current system than to reform it. You can cite good arguments for proper civil marriage all you want, but short of an activist judiciary favorable to you, you won't get it in the system today as it's constituted.

Oh yeah and I also by and large couldn't care less how abolishing civil marriage would affect the irreligious. Marriage is a religious institution that the state first recognized then coopted. The irreligious only have a right to it insofar as they abide by the terms of their culture's religious institutions or another valid religious authority. There ought not to be valid marriages for the purely secular anyway.

The problem isn't that liberals "can’t be bothered by any strong claims of religious liberty, if those claims clash with today's reigning liberal pieties.", because that's true of any group if you just sub out "liberal" for whatever other ideology you have in mind.

Is it true that "religious liberty" or "freedom of conscience" is equivalent to just another "reigning piety"? You may recall Lydia and Jeff Culbreath going back and forth on this subject matter -- I think the broader question should be are their common goods knowable to all via reason (i.e. natural laws) and therefore should we think of these natural laws just like any other "ideology"? First, I would say no -- we should not -- laws should always and everywhere reflect natural laws, subject to prudential considerations (i.e. I don't care that you live in India -- it is still against the natural law to burn widows alive and the British were right to end the barbaric practice). Second, is religious freedom one of those natural laws? I tend to Lydia's position that it is, although can understand why at different times and places restrictions may have been more or less intense on public practice, again for prudential reasons.

Dunsany,

As I have become more of a social conservative/traditionalist, I have tried to move away from rights arguments, preferring to talk about natural laws (see above) and the common good. The problem for you is that so-called "anti-discrimination" laws are foolish as a matter of public policy (sometimes racial discrimination -- and most of the time other forms of discrimination -- makes sense), obviously such laws conflict with other common goods and so can never be enforced neutrally, etc.

Either people have a right to use their private property and do what they want with it or they don't. Nozick and other great libertarian understood this, and you can't weasel out of the implications of your view by discussing non-consenting parties.

Huh? This makes no sense whatsoever -- property conflict only occurs in the context of non-consenting parties -- if everyone either didn't care what you did with your property or agreed with your decisions, then there wouldn't be conflict and laws governing such conflict wouldn't be necessary. But men aren't angels, etc.

That's funny Jeff, it sure seemed like your OP was supposed to be about "property rights" and "freedom of association."

Huh? This makes no sense whatsoever -- property conflict only occurs in the context of non-consenting parties -- if everyone either didn't care what you did with your property or agreed with your decisions, then there wouldn't be conflict and laws governing such conflict wouldn't be necessary. But men aren't angels, etc.

I thought the meaning was obvious. I'm talking about hurting someone when they didn't consent to the risk of being hurt. Shouting fire in a crowded theater creates a dangerous situation in which people can be harmed because of your behavior, and it is therefore acceptable to limit your ability to do it. This sort of thinking appears everywhere in political philosophy and American jurisprudence.

No, the original post was about insane liberals. The fact that we have a Constitution in America that enshrines certain individual rights is something I accept and discuss as given. There is no right (and I should add, no good philosophical argument either) to "not get humiliated at the cleaners".

"I thought the meaning was obvious. I'm talking about hurting someone when they didn't consent to the risk of being hurt."

O.K., but then why do you say, "Either people have a right to use their private property and do what they want with it or they don't." The two statements don't make sense together -- private property rights will always be constrained by how you might impact non-consenting parties. And those impacts are precisely what we are debating.

I think we should focus only on impacts that make sense from a moral framework that uses natural law and/or the common good -- you want to use some sort of insane liberal measuring tool. Thankfully, the Constitution was originally set up within a natural law framework -- unfortunately, we've had about a century of bad judicial decision-making that has undone that framework allowing judges to make up the law as they go.

I'm _guessing_, but might be wrong, that Dunsany is using the phrase "getting hurt when you didn't consent to the risk" to include things like "feeling humiliated at the dry cleaners." In other words, getting your feelings hurt.

someone observed them not standing and applauding and the result was that he was called before a group of faculty and chastised for his offensive behavior and threatened his academic advancement unless he attended sensitivity training.

This behavior on the part of a university is wrong, and out to be criticized by Americans without regard to their political leanings.

Apparently we are to stop calling out the liberals, give up on America and retreat into some sort of Christian community like the Amish -- and you thought Mike T counseled despair ;-)

I prefer to think of my counsel as counsel to action and not despair. If anything, I'd say that you and Lydia counsel despair here by taking the road that we must just watch as things are corrupted and fail and the left advances since we can't have our way. By comparison, I have confidence that most conservatives would choose marriage and stable family life in a legal vacuum, whereas liberals' penchant for "alternative lifestyles" would finally play out to their defeat and ruin.

I think you perceive the people who disagree with you to be much more in lockstep about religious liberty and nondiscrimination laws than they really are, and this is to your detriment. (For example, the perception that you are fighting a "war" against an unified "enemy" can lead, and has led, to social conservatives seriously suggesting dismantling the institution of civil marriage in order to "burn the crops" and beat the enemy.)

After Elane Photography, in New Mexico, was sued because she refused to photograph a lesbian wedding, she was found by a court to be in violation of the law. This is what Thomas Kincaid wrote at the gay blog "Box Turtle Bulletin:"

Where some might see Elaine, her views, and her opinions as an enemy that must be vanquished, I just see some woman being forced by the government to work where and when she doesn’t want to work. And I find that deeply troubling.

[...]

Americans cherish individuality above almost all else. And gay people know more than anyone that coercion to conform to the expectations of government is by its nature oppressive and prone to abuse. Surely it has never been our desire to force those who don’t like us to perform like puppets on a string?

The court has spoken. The law was broken. Elane Photography is not entitled to refuse to photograph same-sex commitment ceremonies.

And that is a tragedy.

I believe it is time for New Mexico to change its law.

The commenters were split. Here's one:

This is a case of the government effectively forcing a woman to work for some one she doesn’t wish to work for or with. The 1st Amendment Freedom of Association has to include the freedom *not* to associate with someone (for any reason) for it to have any validity or meaning. In this case, the New Mexico court was wrong. The couple who sued were wrong as well, They gained nothing but animosity for gays and furthering the belief that we are trying to force ourselves on others.

Meanwhile, after the appeals ran out, the very-liberal Barry Deutsch at the very-liberal "Alas, a Blog" wrote this:

I agree with Eugene Volokh, who argues that the decision should be overturned on First Amendment grounds: “It seems to me that the right to be free from compelled speech includes the right not to create First-Amendment-protected expression — photographs, paintings, songs, press releases, or what have you — that you disagree with, even if no-one would perceive you as endorsing that expression.”

It’s wrong for Ms. Huguenin to discriminate against same-sex ceremonies, but this isn’t a wrong that should have a legal remedy. I’d say the same if Ms. Huguenin was discriminating against Jewish weddings, mixed-race weddings, or weddings of fat people. Artists, even commercial artists, have a legal right to decide what to say (or not say).

(emphasis added)

Here's a commenter who goes by the name "A Gay," criticizing the decision:

It’s one thing to say you shouldn’t be homophobic, to say that society looks down on that. It’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish to declare it illegal.

One of the commenters had a much more nuanced view of the purpose of nondiscrimination laws than is attributed to liberals by the writers on this blog:

As a liberal, who considers justice and equality more important than freedom, I take a folk-Kantian (and possibly slippery-slope) approach: permitting one person to discriminate is tantamount to permitting them all to discriminate (since there’s no way to make it legal for some but not all to). So the question is, then, is wedding photography in the category of services that should not be completely unavailable to someone, by law? I don’t think it is. This is the sort of malefaction for which the law may not be the best remedy.

I'm not bringing this up to argue that all liberals have strong "religious liberty" views when it comes to discrimination cases like this, but to point out that there are plenty on "the left" who are publicly in support of realistic religious liberty.

Generally speaking, the left is much better than the writers on this blog at understanding and accepting that other people have a right to their own personal religious and philosophical beliefs.

And that's why, if you want to look into a crystal ball, the individuals that you perceive to be the cultural left are winning. Because they are willing, when necessary, to fight for their own rights and your rights at the same time. Even, in some cases, when this requires acknowledging and accepting that you have deeply-held beliefs that run contrary to their own.

Frankly, I think if you believe that, you're deluded. The commenter you linked to is commenting from a post about how somebody lost a court case and was forced into photographing a homosexual wedding if they wanted to keep their business..

'Generally speaking, the left is much better than the writers on this blog at understanding and accepting that other people have a right to their own personal religious and philosophical beliefs.'

Nonsense on stilts, bordering on calumny. Name one writer on this blog who has ever claimed that people don't even have the right to the mere holding of their " personal religious and philosophical" beliefs. I've been lurking around here for years, and I can't recall ever reading a single statement to that effect.

Generally speaking, the left has no real theoretical understanding of what a "right" actually is, what the philosophical frameworks are which make it intelligible in the first place, etc., and so, no, the left is most certainly not better at understanding, let alone subsequently accepting, any given right.

What you actually find is that, almost invariably, "right" is just a buzzword they mindlessly deploy to defend a set of narratives they're emotionally invested in, and in so doing they vigorously and perpetually get in the way of real rights and real freedoms.

By the way, the idea that the left is seriously conflicted or split about the inclusion of homosexuals in non-discrimination statutes because of cases like the Hugonin photography case is just statistically false. Several years ago I opposed a local non-discrimination ordinance in my own rather mainstream Midwestern small city. The left was a unified bloc. By no means was the ordinance merely supported by a "few extremists." And yes, the Hugonin case was brought up in debate, because it was already in the pipeline. The unvarying opinion (which I have often seen expressed by leftist commentators on this blog) was that she was a bigot and didn't have a right to "discriminate," that she should get out of the wedding photography business if she didn't want to do the job. The most nuanced it ever got was that she should have lied and said she was already booked on that day rather than being "offensive" by giving her real reason for not taking the job.

the perception that you are fighting a "war" against an unified "enemy" can lead, and has led, to social conservatives seriously suggesting dismantling the institution of civil marriage in order to "burn the crops" and beat the enemy

That's definitely a minority view among social conservatives. Among this blog's commentators, I would not want to undertake to state the precise extent to which Mike T., whom you are quoting there, is or is not a "social conservative." More like a rather quirky libertarian with some agreements with social conservatives but with, also, his own fish to fry.

Nonsense on stilts, bordering on calumny. Name one writer on this blog who has ever claimed that people don't even have the right to the mere holding of their "personal religious and philosophical" beliefs.

I didn't say that writers on this blog were claiming that others don't have a right to their personal beliefs. Rather, that writers on this blog are bad at understanding and accepting that other people have this right.

I'd be happy to give you an example:

Generally speaking, the left has no real theoretical understanding of what a "right" actually is, what the philosophical frameworks are which make it intelligible in the first place, etc.

In other words, Haha! See, we don't need to concern ourselves with what they believe, because they're wrong, and we're right! Their personal religious and philosophical beliefs are beneath our consideration.

Let me also add: I saw in that ordinance battle that homosexual rights are almost passe on the left. They are so 90's. Taken as a given. Last decade's battle. The new black was definitely trans rights.

Now, the trans agenda makes the coercive nature of all of this just that much more obvious. It takes it up a notch. When the man you hired as Bob shows up in a skirt demanding to be called "Diane" and to use the employees' women's restroom, because he's "in transition" and this is his new identity, you either comply with his demands or you don't. And you either insist that your employees refer to the guy who was Bob a few weeks ago as "her" and "Diane," or you don't. There is no middle ground. This is what is demanded in the name of the inclusion of "transgender" in your local, state, or national non-discrimination ordinance. Get with it or get in trouble. You must affirm. You must say what we demand that you say.

I posted several months back about the fact that in some state public school systems, children who complain about having to share a bathroom with a biological member of the other gender, and who refuse to refer to that person by the opposite pronoun, the pronoun demanded by that person's "identity" though inconsistent with that person's biology, are to be punished. The school is absolutely clear about it. It isn't the biological boy who disrupts the normal operation of social relationships in the school by demanding to be called a girl and by demanding to use the girls' restroom who is to be punished. He must be accommodated. It is the young girls who complain who are to be punished for intolerance.

And that was the next step after homosexual non-discrimination rights. It isn't necessary to *predict* this. We're past prediction. It's already here.

(Presumably, if you didn't call Bob by female pronouns at the dry cleaner's, that would humiliate him.)

Last time I gave these examples, the leftists came in _bang_ on cue, in 3...2...1...and asked, "Well, is Diane a transgender woman? Why wouldn't you call Diane a woman if she is really a transgender woman?"

By the way, the idea that the left is seriously conflicted or split about the inclusion of homosexuals in non-discrimination statutes

Lydia, I absolutely was not trying to make the case that the left is split or conflicted about "the inclusion of homosexuals in non-discrimination statutes."

Do you really think that's the point I was making? And, not to belabor a point, but are you really that bad at understanding how other people think?

When Thomas Kincaid writes, at his gay blog, "I believe it is time for New Mexico to change its law," he is obviously not advocating that New Mexico remove "sexual orientation" from its nondiscrimination statutes. He is advocating that businesses like Elane Photography be exempted from nondiscrimination statutes altogether. (Because he believes in equality, and he supports the rights of people even when he disagrees with them.)

Barry Deutsch at "Alas" is not arguing that we shouldn't include homosexuals in non-discrimination statutes. He writes, on the same page: "I’d say the same if Ms. Huguenin was discriminating against Jewish weddings, mixed-race weddings, or weddings of fat people." He's not against nondiscrimination statutes in general. He thinks this case is one where the statute is inappropriate.

The sense I have is that Kincaid is an outlier and most (70%? 80%? higher?) of the left is happy to crush religious objectors under their ideology of equality. We've already seen this with Catholic adoption agencies -- not going to place kids with fake parents? Then the State says you can't help kids get placed in any homes period. It happened in Massachusetts and it happened in my sad State of Illinois.

The liberals don't seem to be working very hard to rectify these injustices.

I'm realistic about the left. When people predict that folks are going to be able to legally marry their dog, or their easy chair, that's ludicrous, and those people misunderstand the left. The same is true for people who are predicting a new institution for legal multiple-person marriage. It's not gonna happen anytime in the near future. And the people who were writing about pedophilia in this thread missed the point of the linked article--there will not be any significant political movement to legalize sex with children, either from the left or the right.

But if you were to predict that, in the near future, transgender persons would be treated under the law as (basically) a member of whatever sex they identify as? I think that prediction is correct. There's a clear path from point A to point B in the existing political momentum.

We might differ on how big a difference this will make in the average person's daily life, because the actual number of trans people is fairly small, and many trans people will choose not to make waves for personal reasons, but in the abstract, yeah, trans rights--and the inclusion of gender identity in nondiscrimination laws--are definitely the next step.

I'm not interested in arguing about whether these legal changes are good or bad. I just want to demonstrate that I'm willing to acknowledge when you are right about something.

My point in bringing up "trans" rights (and as I said, it isn't a prediction, because it's already here in the law) is that when a person is forced to acknowledge them in an employee, classmate, etc., this amounts to forced speech and fairly radical coerced action different from what one would ordinarily engage in (e.g., a girl sharing a school bathroom with a biological boy without complaint). This demonstrates that the agenda as a whole is not compatible with "live and let live."

This demonstrates that the agenda as a whole is not compatible with "live and let live."

Continuing with this "Thous shalt not hurt feelings", we can see the forked-tongue progressives speak with when same-sex marriage is compared to transgendered. When it's homosexuals and marriage, the rhetoric is, "Oh, the difference between men and women is miniscule. Just a few different body parts and the rest is just arbitrary cultural artifacts." But when it's transgender, they reverse themselves then suddenly the difference between men and women is everything, those body parts are so critical that radical surgery is needed and how can you be so cruel as to force someone to be "trapped" in the wrong body? There's no sane principle in operation here, so while we can chortle about the unlikelihood of removal of age of consent, etc. no one has shown anything like a logical stopping point. It's the old Lawrence Auster quip: people in favor of same-sex unions but not marriages are in favor of same-sex marriage but just not ready to say so yet.

"As a liberal, who considers justice and equality more important than freedom..."

Except of course when it comes to sexual freedom, which trumps all. Make no mistake -- this whole thing is simply the latest step in the Left's long march to get "sexual liberty" ensconced in both culture and law. Hence, Jeff's statement of what the essence of Modern Liberalism is is not too far off the mark: "I'll have sex with whomever (or whatever) I want, whenever I want, and no one's allowed to hurt my feelings over it."

At this point the Leftist will usually hem and haw a bit about "consent" and "not hurting anyone," but both notions are arbitrary and not grounded in reality. Is it okay to consent to be hurt? Can a person who consents still be exploited? Is that exploitation not "hurting" them? Is the "age of consent" rooted in anything other more substantial than statutory law?

"the people who were writing about pedophilia in this thread missed the point of the linked article--there will not be any significant political movement to legalize sex with children"

I'd wager a year's salary that the movement will not attempt to "legalize sex with children," but rather to re-define what exactly is meant by "children." The push will be to lower the age of consent -- iow, PEDOphilia will still be a crime, but EPHEBOphilia will not.

Didn't the Marquis De Sade say something about how the real goal of sexual libertinism was to get the children? Funny how chickens always come home to roost...

It's all well and good to point to liberals in disagreement with this, but as others have pointed out it is not only the left who are pushing this in the first place but also the ones who have a very large faction that is strongly opposed to any dissent here. Even most tradcons will tell you that if two homosexuals want to get together in a private place and have a faux wedding they are not going to hound them, disrupt it by shouting down the service with cries of "sodomites! perverts! deviants!" unlike how liberals are notorious for literally shouting down their opponents.

Try as you might, you are not going to succeed in turning this into an example of how liberalism is more principled and flexible since it is a very large percentage of liberals who are the ones aggressing and showing no quarter. Such opponents don't deserve compromise or mercy. Their position is extremely unreasonable and to the extent that they show no sign of tolerating those who disagree with them and inflicting that intolerance via the methods they are employing, they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt or any other brotherly treatment.

To be blunt: f#$% them and f#$% the horse they rode in on. Civilized people don't engage in this sort of behavior toward those who disagree with them and trying to show where a few conservatives and libertarians have "acted out" as some sort of false equivalence is just a non-starter.

O.K., but then why do you say, "Either people have a right to use their private property and do what they want with it or they don't." The two statements don't make sense together -- private property rights will always be constrained by how you might impact non-consenting parties. And those impacts are precisely what we are debating.

I'm talking about directly impacting them. I don't have the right to punch you and take your wallet, but I do have the right to refuse to sell you my property. That's how a libertarian would view it anyway. Speaking personally, I don't believe in strong property rights and was trying to point out that arguing against discrimination laws using that sort of argument is easy to mock using a reductio ad absurdum.

I don't know enough about your theory of natural law to really comment on that, but I assume that whatever you dislike violates the natural law and whatever you like is A okay. A bit like constitutional law, eh?

I'd wager a year's salary that the movement will not attempt to "legalize sex with children," but rather to re-define what exactly is meant by "children." The push will be to lower the age of consent -- iow, PEDOphilia will still be a crime, but EPHEBOphilia will not.

If you haven't read it, read the link in my first post on this thread as there has been at least one formal attempt at this.

A word of caution about the term "ephebophile," I looked up the definition on Wikipedia and the age range is 15 to 19. I would say that anyone who says men who are primarily attracted to hot college coeds is a deviant is main-lining liberalism harder than a life long heroin addict.

"I didn't say that writers on this blog were claiming that others don't have a right to their personal beliefs. Rather, that writers on this blog are bad at understanding and accepting that other people have this right."

A distinction without a difference. You might as well say, "I didn't say that the writers on this blog were claiming that liberals are subhuman. Rather, that writers on this blog are bad at understanding and accepting that liberals are human beings, too." Incredibly stupid and patronizing.

People are entitled to think and believe whatever they want. What trouble is there in understanding something so straightforward? No one here is advocating arguments in favor of thought-policing. (Though unfortunately, the same cannot be said of sections of the Left.)

"Haha! See, we don't need to concern ourselves with what they believe, because they're wrong, and we're right! Their personal religious and philosophical beliefs are beneath our consideration."

And with that, you just jumped the shark.

Re: "We don't need to concern ourselves with what they believe," and "Their personal religious and philosophical beliefs are beneath our consideration"...What in the world are you talking about? This entire blog is a sustained criticism of liberal beliefs and the social expressions thereof, and criticism of belief X implies concern about and consideration of belief X. And realize also that criticism does not indicate an inability to "understand and accept that people are entitled to their beliefs."

Re: "They're wrong, and we're right"...What's the point here? Why does this matter? They think we're wrong, we think they're wrong; realists think nominalists are wrong, nominalists think realists are wrong; Christians think Hindus are wrong, Hindus think Christians are wrong; and so on. How is the mere act of thinking someone wrong a moral failing?

I think Phil might have been in part alluding to my callous and heartless use of the phrase "Cry me a river" on my own thread when referring to the alleged "harm" done to homosexuals by not calling their relationships "marriages." According to Phil's perspective, my saying that means that I am not trying to see things from their perspective and that I am insisting that only a (to his mind) unobvious natural law view of the telos of sexuality is to be given any consideration.

To which I reply:

First: Harm is an objective matter. If Joe thinks he's being harmed because we don't call him Napoleon Bonaparte, I am not required to prove my bona fides as a deep thinker by pondering deeply over the possibility that I'm really harming him by not referring to him as "your Majesty." Joe has a problem. The whole world doesn't have to play along with his problem in order not to be "harming" him.

Second: Homosexuals who are grown-ups (there are a few of these) rather than spoiled brats recognize that all of society doesn't have to be re-ordered just because they feel a certain way. *Even if* one doesn't agree that homosexual acts are perverted and homosexual desires innately disordered, anyone with eyes in his head ought to be able to see the social importance of marriage as heterosexually understood, as a pillar of history, as an important institution. For centuries many homosexuals didn't think what they were doing was wrong but nonetheless didn't even consider that their relationships should be called "marriages" or that they were being harmed, for crying out loud, if society didn't refer to their relationships as marriages. In fact, several gloating articles have appeared recently in the non-religious press telling us gleefully that homosexuals mean something Orwellian-ly different by the very term "monogamy" and that this means that "open marriage" will become more acceptable among heterosexuals, too. (So much for "how can homosexual marriage possibly hurt heterosexual marriage?") In other words, the relationships, even taken on their own terms and even aside from whether they are wrong or right, are not at all like traditional marriage and therefore cannot be expected to fulfill the same role in society as traditional marriage. Again, mature homosexuals ought to be able to realize this and ought to be able to refrain from drama queening it and exaggerating the inconveniences of not being regarded as "married" to their present, sorta-monogamous partners into grave injustice and harm. Some are that mature, but they are being taught by their fellow activists not to be.

They are precisely as bratty and emotionally stunted as you accuse them of being. Blacks didn't object to being "humiliated at the dry cleaners" but rather at being at the minimum barred under penalty of trespass law violation and at worse (truly worse case scenario) being murdered by the KKK if they pushed too far. Since gay rights activists love to use racially charged history to justify themselves, how about this comparison. Their experience at the dry cleaners is to the pre-Civil Rights black experience what modern "ghettos" (self-segration in which people can leave at any time and do) are like next to a real ghetto like the Warsaw Ghetto. It's so farcical that you just want to ask... "don't you feel stupid just by making this comparison?"

But the sad part is, I bet many liberals would truly say that indeed, there are many similarities between SE DC/Camden/South Central LA/Oakland and the Warsaw Ghetto because police and minorities.

For what it's worth, the reason I lack so much empathy for these people is simple. I was a geek growing up. I got bullied, picked on, was not popular and had a hard time making friends. I hung out with the geeks, goths, punks and other rejects. By the time I got to college, all of us from that group made our choice of where we wanted to go. Some of us got our s#$% together and learned how to operate in the world and to stand up for ourselves, while others continued wallowing in the middle and high school cultural faction in which we'd relegated ourselves for whatever reason back then.

I have sympathy for gay teens who are relentlessly bullied. I have absolutely no sympathy for a grown homosexual man who ought to be able to handle himself who feels "humiliated" because someone doesn't affirm his lifestyle.

It's also worth noting that a movement that is this hysterical to emotional harm of any sort must necessarily become censorious either culturally or politically (or both!) It's just in their nature. No matter what they proclaim officially about supporting free speech, their inability to handle criticism will at some point manifest in moves to counter it and establishing mechanisms to help like-minded people through official channels. This is why conservatives and libertarians should not sympathize with those who are easily offended. No matter how nice they may seem, it's just sympathy for the devil with how corporate and political culture work.

Wrong. If you're that ignorant I don't want to waste my time arguing with you. Semantic debates are meaningless.

If you can't be bothered to, charitably, assume that, perhaps I meant something other than what you thought was a statement made as the product of ignorance (with an associated insult, to boot) and ask for clarification (I was writing while proctoring an exam and under a bit of a time crunch), then I am not sure that we could have a productive conversation. I don't know if it would be worth explaining why you are too vague in asserting that the Pope is a socialist. I don't even think I would get a fair hearing, even though I suspect that you have no idea what the Catholic Church teaches about socialism. Obviously, there have been modifications to socialist theory throughout history and in different regions, but it seems that your blanket statement, "The Pope is a Socialist," is really too vague. If you don't understand why, then ask. I know why. Apparently, you did not understand my original short comments. You assumed ignorance. That is bad form.

Oh, and did you not realize that the statement:

"Semantic debates are meaningless."

Is not only self-referential, but irony?

I don't mean to be uncharitable, myself, but making unfounded allegations about someone and committing the fallacy of Kicking the Stone as a way of ignoring someone or opinions you deem are ignorant (made by people you do not know) is grounds for some fraternal correction. Play nice. I used to be a regular commenter here, and I think most of the regular readers will vouche for me. Even if I were ignorant, a poor blindsided squirrel about to be run over by your brilliance, I would not be impressed by your ability to be so inhumanly dismissive. You do not do your side any favors by using those tactics.

While you may know more about modern socialism than I (since classical socialism has been denounced by the Church, I haven't really needed to keep up on the latest deviations from a deviation) I, probably, know a lot more than you about semantics, seeing as how I do research on its effects in humor. I hope that if you had made the statement, "humor is humor," that I would not have called you ignorant and unworthy of wasting my time on.

Ordinarily, I should not defend myself, since that can border on pride, but, as this is a public forum and you have, essentially, called me an ignoramus not worthy of being responded to, that detraction might bias people against taking anything seriously that I might say in the future. That, simply, is not right for you to do.

I am not saying that no one should be humiliated at WWWtW (pace the sad quote of this article). They will be, from time to time. Such is the nature of Original Sin. People, however, have a right to a good name, mutatis mutandis. Denying someone service at the dry cleaners is not denying their good name. It is never right to judge the soul of a person, but, with good reason, one must judge their acts and acts do have consequences, both between people and within groups,

Even most tradcons will tell you that if two homosexuals want to get together in a private place and have a faux wedding they are not going to hound them, disrupt it by shouting down the service with cries of "sodomites! perverts! deviants!" unlike how liberals are notorious for literally shouting down their opponents.

Except that this is in fact already happening, on similar "nondiscrimination" grounds as gay unions. Not the "near future"--last year, with legal precedent for doing away with polygamy laws entirely in Utah.

My point in bringing up "trans" rights (and as I said, it isn't a prediction, because it's already here in the law) is that when a person is forced to acknowledge them in an employee, classmate, etc., this amounts to forced speech and fairly radical coerced action different from what one would ordinarily engage in

Lydia, I'm no expert in employment law such that I can predict exactly how every state treats Employee A when Employee A decides to call other employees whatever gender s/he feels s/he wants to call them.

But, as I mentioned, if you're advocating for religious liberty, then it behooves you to remove your own personal beliefs from the discussion. Thus, if your point is that all Employee A's deserve the right to treat other employees as though they are whatever gender that Employee A feels they are, and that Employee B's get the same rights under the law, then great. You're an advocate of liberty, with a libertarian bent. You get to call Diane Steve, and Diane gets to call you Frank if he wants. You get to request a private restroom without intrustion from Steve/Diane, and Diane gets to request a private restroom without intrusion from you. And so does Stephanie, because she agrees with Diane that you're really Frank.

But is that really what you're advocating? It seems like what you really want is a legal situation where the law treats Diane as Steve, because in your personal religious view Steve/Diane is a man, without regard to Steve/Diane's personal religious view about herself (or himself...still with me?)

Is that accurate? I mean, if you're just really libertarian about workplace laws, that's fine, but that has absolutely nothing to do with whether transgenderism is real, or whether gay couples can marry.

So, yeah, "live and let live" is theoretically possible, it just means you'd have to accept the possibility that someone would talk smack about your marriage or your gender.

Except that this is in fact already happening, on similar "nondiscrimination" grounds as gay unions. Not the "near future"--last year, with legal precedent for doing away with polygamy laws entirely in Utah.

No, Pellegri, you're wrong. Utah is not creating a new institution for multiple-person marriage; they are decriminalizing polygamy. As Lydia pointed out in the previous thread, this is already the status quo in some parts of the country. Utah had special laws to prevent people from living together and calling themselves married, and that's what was at issue in the CNN article you linked.

Now that you know this, are you more likely to step back and say, "Gosh, you were right! I really didn't understand what 'the left' was going for. Huh, I should reflect on that"...?

A word of caution about the term "ephebophile," I looked up the definition on Wikipedia and the age range is 15 to 19. I would say that anyone who says men who are primarily attracted to hot college coeds is a deviant is main-lining liberalism harder than a life long heroin addict.

I'm really not sure what you're saying here, Mike.

those body parts are so critical that radical surgery is needed and how can you be so cruel as to force someone to be "trapped" in the wrong body?

Actually, Scott, that's not the case. While the left certainly accepts the right of a person to have surgery, the academic left no longer takes a person's genitals into consideration when it comes to whether that person identifies as a male or a female.

I'll say this much, Phil: The law should not be forcing the employer to force his employees to call Joe "Diane." Nor to let "Diane" use the women's restroom. If some employer wants to have a fun-house where employees make stuff up for no reason and call *actual women* men and *actual men* women (yes, contra your po-mo terminology, there are really facts of the matter here), then I suppose that is that employer's prerogative. But when we are being told that we *must* call the employee by whatever gender terms *he* regards himself as, even if these are blatantly contrary to reality (remember reality?), then there is not the slightest pretense of "live and let live" anymore. And the same for customers. See my anecdote on the other thread about the salesgirl forced to treat two male customers as females and goaded to comment on how a skirt looked on one of them. Had she not done so, she would have been subject to probable firing by an employer worried about probable lawsuits for a failure to provide proper "public accommodation" to these "trans" people.

So, no, all employees do not "deserve the right" to say silly, contrary-to-obvious-reality things about their fellow employees, just to be jerks. If somebody is calling an _actual man_ a woman and gets fired for being a jerk pointlessly to his fellow employee, he gets no sympathy from me. If somebody is calling an _actual man_ a man and gets fired because the actual man is demanding that he be called a woman, the employee definitely gets sympathy from me. I think the action of the employer is outrageous. That doesn't mean I think the employer's action should be illegal (it's often best to allow employers to be jerks, too), but it should certainly not be _required_ by law nor even _perceived_ to be required by law. Moreover, any law that is understandably taken to require such a thing is a perverse, insane, and tyrannical law and makes not the slightest pretense of allowing people to live and let live, not the slightest pretense of being about freedom, whatever words its crazy advocates might use in their advocacy.

Actually, Scott, that's not the case. While the left certainly accepts the right of a person to have surgery, the academic left no longer takes a person's genitals into consideration when it comes to whether that person identifies as a male or a female.

But when we are being told that we *must* call the employee by whatever gender terms *he* regards himself as, even if these are blatantly contrary to reality (remember reality?),

In other words, you don't really disagree with the main point that I was making on the other thread. Your personal religious and philosophical beliefs reflect reality, and Diane's personal religious and philosophical beliefs are wrong. Your beliefs aren't beliefs because you believe them.

The left--in general--may be way too involved in postmodernism, relativism and metadiscourse for your liking, but it does allow them to discuss your beliefs in a way that you don't allow yourself to discuss theirs.

This is to your detriment even if you are correct and your beliefs are an accurate reflection of reality.

You are taking reality not to matter at all. I did indeed say that an employer should be allowed to be a jerk. If an employer is so trans-friendly that he fires somebody for refusing to go along with the trans pretense of a fellow employee, I'm not saying he should be sued. But I'm saying he's crazy and his action is outrageous. What, then? Is one never even to make such evaluations because one is to regard one's own opinions as _merely_ opinions? If we can do that with whether Bob is a man or a woman named Diane, then, yeah, we've really gone pretty far in a po-mo direction. I suppose we should be glad that y'all don't get away with trying that with whether a car is a duck. And postmodern surgery would be really interesting to incorporate into society: "I perceive my gall bladder to be a liver and insist that you operate accordingly."

So, no, I'm not going to call my "opinion" that Bob is a man a mere opinion. In the scenario as I have envisaged it, Bob _is_ biologically a man. And that has implications for what is a stupid and outrageous thing for an employer to do. But you're following the script very nicely, pretending that there is no truth or reality to all of this.

In any event, my original point in bringing this up was merely to show the _intrinsic pushiness_ of the trans non-discrimination agenda. It blows right past all _pretense_ that it's susceptible to a live-and-let-live analysis, because in the nature of the case it requires massive behavioral modification of all the people surrounding the "trans" employee or customer.

Thinking you're a man when your a woman is more than just a "differing philosophical or religious belief". It is flat out wrong. If her philosophy was that she was a toaster would you say it's a mere differing philosophical belief?

It blows right past all _pretense_ that it's susceptible to a live-and-let-live analysis

See, and I think that's not how they see it, because--for a trans person--everything you could possibly need to know about how to treat them, legally or socially, is already within the status quo.

If Michelle and Amanda are two people you work with, and one is a trans woman and one is not, which one are you going to treat differently?

One of them thinks that they are a woman and the other one also thinks that they are a woman. What a conundrum! Which one do I treat like a woman and which one do I treat like a man? Michelle? Or Amanda?

Or do you need more information before you can make that decision?

If her philosophy was that she was a toaster would you say it's a mere differing philosophical belief?

MarcAnthony, since I approach the world with a tone of general bemusement, I can think of few things more awesome than working with a person who genuinely believes they are a toaster. Can you?

I mean, you'd have to find an extension cord to go out to lunch with them. But think of the puns!

"Julius, that is a brave little outfit! Love it."

As long as I don't have to eat bread that comes out of an orifice.

Of course, I've never worked with a toaster before, or at least, not one that could express to me that it is a toaster.

Have you ever worked with someone who could say to you that they were a woman? How did you handle that?

Not playing the "When did you stop beating your wife?" game, Phil. I treat people just fine.

Anyway, you are either missing the point or not addressing it. You're saying that we should all act as if men who claim to be women are women. But if a man claims to be a toaster, we all agree that it's ridiculous (you might think it's funny, but it's funny because it's ridiculous).

"While the left certainly accepts the right of a person to have surgery, the academic left no longer takes a person's genitals into consideration when it comes to whether that person identifies as a male or a female."

As I said above, try applying this to race:

"While the left certainly accepts the right of a person to have chemical color alteration, the academic left no longer takes a person's skin pigment into consideration when it comes to whether that person identifies as a black or a white."

Ludicrous is not a strong enough word to describe such illogical gyrations.

Think about this w/r/t Michael Jackson: most folks thought he was a bit mental to have surgical and chemical work done on him so he'd appear to be white, but had he changed to a woman a lot of the same people wouldn't have batted an eye.

Once again, proponents of sexual freedom give what would otherwise be considered wack-job behavior a free pass because that behavior is related to sex.

1) I'm surprised that the age range for an ephebophile is primarily legal adult (18-19) or "damn near legal adult who can join the military and go to war" (17).
2) I suspect that there is a political motivation along the lines of what NM said about redefining attraction to minors, since most of what an ephebophile targets is either a legal adult or a minor old enough to marry and have sex in much of the US with little to no input from their parents.
3) The only people who find it abnormal for men of any age to primarily be interested in attractive college-age women are feminists, old women and men who harbor a pathological bitterness toward men who date younger women.

The fact is that there is nothing even remotely abnormal about a psychologically healthy male finding college age women to be his particular ideal preference in terms of age and looks. These are objectively not children. They're women. Young women, but women not children.

** attraction is not the same as saying should act on it. It's perfectly healthy for a 60 year old man to find a drop dead gorgeous 19 year old very attractive. It's also not reasonable for him to pursue her since there's nothing prudent about that relationship even if they are completely licit (absolutely above board relationship leading to marriage). By calling that deviant you are just defining deviancy down.

Ephebophilia refers to sexual attraction to young persons who are post-pubescent but not yet of legal age to consent. Although wiki puts it at 15-19, it seems to me that in this day and age, given early development of teenagers, lower age-of-consent rules, etc., what you're looking at is more like 13 - 16/17.

There's a reason why women in p*rn have to be at least 18 y.o. But there's also a reason why there is a large subgenre of p*rn that features 18 year-olds who look and act 14, or even younger.

On a not too unrelated note, there are feminists now claiming that rape should include sex by deception. So if a guy deceives a woman into consenting, he's now a rapist. Lovely. Hate to be divorced under that regime.

Anyway, what's even wrong with finding a post-pubecent girl sexually attractive, whatever her exact age? Sure, if they're too young you shouldn't act on the feelings, but sexual characteristics are sexual characteristics. Men are hardwired to like them in any case.

There's nothing wrong with the attraction -- it is, as you say, hotwired. It's the acting on it that's problematic. But this is exactly the point. By lowering the age of consent you legally permit/condone a problematic action.

The "tolerant left" is now calling for the formal elimination of "academic freedom" in favor of "academic justice." See their high-minded love of freedom in action!

If our university community opposes racism, sexism, and heterosexism, why should we put up with research that counters our goals simply in the name of “academic freedom”?

Instead, I would like to propose a more rigorous standard: one of “academic justice.” When an academic community observes research promoting or justifying oppression, it should ensure that this research does not continue.

"While the left certainly accepts the right of a person to have chemical color alteration, the academic left no longer takes a person's skin pigment into consideration when it comes to whether that person identifies as a black or a white."

Ludicrous is not a strong enough word to describe such illogical gyrations.

Nice Marmot,
Uh...huh? There are no official purposes, anywhere in this country, where anyone on the left takes a person's "skin pigment" into consideration when determining if that person is black or white.

I'm not really aware of situations where anyone on the right determines race based on skin pigmentation, either.

I think maybe you were too quick to type out an analogy, and you didn't think it through?

I'm trying to be fair to you; I cannot imagine that you really thought minority scholarships or programs that track race in hiring (etc. etc.) are measuring people's skin pigment.

Anyway, you are either missing the point or not addressing it. You're saying that we should all act as if men who claim to be women are women.

MarcAnthony, that is very pointedly not what I have been saying. I said very specifically, earlier in the thread, "I'm not interested in arguing about whether these legal changes are good or bad."

My point is that it is possible to craft nondiscrimination laws where people get to treat each other the same. The point that I am opposing is not "Diane is not a woman, because she's a man!" It is, "It is an unfair burden on me to call Diane "Diane" because her name was Steve, and in my belief system, he is still Steve!" Obviously, people change their names all the time, not just transgender people. So, for example, expecting coworkers to call an employee by a new name is not some special new right that transgender people made up.

If you already have the right to change your name from Marc to Steve, then it's reasonable to allow other employees to change their names, and reasonable for their name changes to be treated the same. It's a more subtle point, I admit. And I can understand why someone would want to roll out their anti-transgender talking points in such a discussion.

On a not too unrelated note, there are feminists now claiming that rape should include sex by deception. So if a guy deceives a woman into consenting, he's now a rapist. Lovely.

Can you give an example of what you're talking about?

Nice Marmot wrote this:

I'd wager a year's salary that the movement will not attempt to "legalize sex with children," but rather to re-define what exactly is meant by "children." The push will be to lower the age of consent -- iow, PEDOphilia will still be a crime, but EPHEBOphilia will not.

And Mike T wrote this:

1) I'm surprised that the age range for an ephebophile is primarily legal adult (18-19) or "damn near legal adult who can join the military and go to war" (17).
2) I suspect that there is a political motivation along the lines of what NM said about redefining attraction to minors, since most of what an ephebophile targets is either a legal adult or a minor old enough to marry and have sex in much of the US with little to no input from their parents.

I'm curious where that discussion is headed. It sounds like NM is saying, "There's going to be a movement to legalize ephebophilia" and MikeT is saying, "Yes, because Ephebophilia is normal."

The "tolerant left" is now calling for the formal elimination of "academic freedom" in favor of "academic justice."

An opinion piece written by an undergraduate published in a student newspaper is now an example of what the "tolerant left" is calling for?

The Westboro Baptist Church has between 20 and 50 members.

If the general idea on this forum is "Let's not pick the most extreme example of people on one side of the spectrum," maybe, you know, it would be reasonable to do that without regard to which side they're on?

Objectively speaking, ephebophilia is already almost entirely legal to act on in much of the union since most states have an age of consent between 16 and 17. But that's not the point. The point is there is a growing push to legalize that down further into the much more questionable 15 and below until we become like some of parts of the Latin America and Europe where 14 and below is legal. The goal NM cites, and I think is real, of these people is to push to the point where pedophilia or quasi-pedophilia is either legal or tolerated. If you look at the first comment, you will see a link that shows that there has been at least one formal, serious attempt to start a conference to this effect by psychologists (as opposed to, say, NAMBLA).

In Europe, the push to go as low as 14 comes mainly from the left and homosexual activists. At least that's my understanding from the news I've read having not actually lived there.

Then why did the official daily of Harvard publish something calling for the suppression of research? As a thought experiment, how about sending something to them suggesting the suppression of research hazardous to public morality and gauge the response.

My point is that it is possible to craft nondiscrimination laws where people get to treat each other the same. The point that I am opposing is not "Diane is not a woman, because she's a man!" It is, "It is an unfair burden on me to call Diane "Diane" because her name was Steve, and in my belief system, he is still Steve!" Obviously, people change their names all the time, not just transgender people. So, for example, expecting coworkers to call an employee by a new name is not some special new right that transgender people made up.

I agree that there are two issues: (1) philosophical -- what is reality and can we reason together to discover reality; (2) in a democratic republic, where we reason together and vote on some of results -- can we collectively agree to alter reality? To answer (2) I would argue in the negative and therefore your question about "transgender rights" is ridiculous on its face. The sooner society realizes this, the sooner society will be restored to health. There is a good reason doctors at John Hopkins decided they would no longer be party to the mutilation of the human body involved in "transgender" operations. I could go on, but you get the picture.

Now that society, however, has decided to pretend to recognize fictions in law (via transgender "rights"), conservatives can ask themselves if it's possible to restore some sanity by protecting their rights via the First Amendment. This is not the best solution (i.e. the best solution is not the pass a law in the first place that pretends to alter reality) but at least it is consistent with our Constitutional traditions and can protect folks from the insanity of the Left.

Obviously, people change their names all the time, not just transgender people. So, for example, expecting coworkers to call an employee by a new name is not some special new right that transgender people made up. If you already have the right to change your name from Marc to Steve, then it's reasonable to allow other employees to change their names, and reasonable for their name changes to be treated the same. It's a more subtle point, I admit. And I can understand why someone would want to roll out their anti-transgender talking points in such a discussion.

So, this really stinky argument involves making a completely unconvincing comparison between a man's merely changing his name, without pretending to change his gender, and a man's pretending that he can change his gender and insisting that everyone play along, which involves requiring all the people around him to change their *entire* set of interactions with him--the pronoun they use (even though they know perfectly well that he is still biologically male), the restrooms or changing rooms which they raise no objection to using with him, what groups they put a child with in gendered sports, and on and on and on. This analogy is totally stupid, because the two things are not remotely similar. Phil then kinda sorta acknowledges this by a not-very-clearly-worded reference to a "subtle point" and by saying that he "can understand" why someone would want to roll out "anti-transgender talking points." In charity, I'll take it that this is a partial admission that the analogy was a total failure. But he doesn't really withdraw the poor analogy, either. In what way this totally failed analogy can possibly support a conclusion like, "An employer or government agent is not being a jackbooted jerk, not to mention a thug, if he voluntarily punishes people for refusing to play along with a transgender" is quite unclear.

No, Pellegri, you're wrong. Utah is not creating a new institution for multiple-person marriage; they are decriminalizing polygamy.

Multiple-person marriage is by definition polygamy. I'm not sure what point you're attempting to make here, other than you're calling polygamy by a different name so you can refute the idea that liberalizing marriage in one area (by saying two men or two women can marry in the same way a man and a woman can) leads to liberalizing it in another (by saying as many people as want to participate in a marriage can do so). I'm not going to go "gee, I thought about this all wrong" because you didn't make any kind of point at all other than to introduce a new, redundant term to the discussion.

But you can try again to blow my mind by defining what a "new institution for multiple-person marriage" is that makes it somehow fundamentally different from polygamy as it's historically understood. Are you perhaps trying to argue the difference on the grounds of "traditional" forms of polygamy involving a spouse of one sex being married to multiple spouses of the other sex? So, in the instance of polygyny, the man's married to four women but each of the four is only married to one man, not to each other? (Although I suppose with the sex restriction lifted, it could be one man married to three women and one man, or one woman with a bunch of wives ala the Igbo.) In that case I'd assume you're arguing about the difference between polygamy and what's often called group marriage, which strictly would still be polygamy but a variety where everyone involved in the union is married to each other.

And that's not new, either, and the cohabitation law would equally have prevented each member of a "married" triad from claiming a marriage to one of their spouses. (Which, of course, would also have been prevented by a same-sex marriage ban, but that's gone in Utah now, too, so a man can be married to his two wives who are married to each other, too.)

So what are you claiming isn't going to happen due to the liberalization of marriage? I'm not seeing where there's a lot of room for innovation on the numbers of people that can get married from plain ol' polygamy, so your claim there is some kind of "other" variety of multiple-person marriage out there that will never become covered under law is bizarre.

I think it's been an interesting experiment to see how shaky Phil's commitment is to the cause of "live and let live" or "freedom" or what-not. He's been assuring us that he's a kinder, gentler leftist, and that there are plenty more like him out there, that we alarmists are just exaggerating, that we shouldn't think of them as intolerant, that it is we on the right who are making this a zero-sum game. And so on and so forth.

So I deliberately picked an area where it's very hard to maintain this facade of tolerance--namely, "trans rights." It's hard there to maintain the facade of tolerance, because you are demanding, on pain of lawsuit or, if you're an employer, on pain of job loss, that people pretend something that they can *see with their own eyes* is false. That they play along with a manifestly false pretense--that a person is a woman whom they can tell quite well is a man or vice versa. That a man who cross-dresses, for example, is a woman. This involves *massive* amounts of coercion. They must change all of their spontaneous speech with regard to this person, must say things they know to be untrue. Must pretend to be comfortable in situations (such as sharing a changing room, if the job or service requires it, or a restroom) where they are definitely going to be uncomfortable. Must play along to the hilt with a kind of bizarre make-believe, and do it with a straight face. As if you told people they had to pretend that you are Marie Antoinette. All the time. On pain of losing their job or being sued.

Now, after I pointed this out, Phil immediately began a postmodern dance in which he pretended that it's *mere opinion* as to whether the cross-dresser really is a man or a woman. He also made an analogy to a person's merely changing his first name.

What he never made at all clear was that his freedom-loving, kinder, gentler, live-and-let-live liberalism would *definitely oppose* firing people (or punishing children in school) for refusing to play along with the transgender, for complaining about using the bathroom with them, for not keeping a straight face and just treating a man as a woman. Somehow, his protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, the evident coerciveness of all of this didn't really bug him all that much. He appears to have no real problem with the employer or the teacher or the swim coach who punishes, even seriously punishes, those over whom he has power if they snicker or giggle or put sarcastic quotes around "her" or display evident discomfort with using the locker room with a member of the opposite sex who is pretending to be a member of their sex. In all the words Phil has typed since I brought up the issue, that sort of punitive and intolerant behavior didn't arouse his clear and unequivocal condemnation.

So I say, I've successfully called the bluff of the Tolerant Liberal on the question of tolerance and the zero-sum game.

To answer (2) I would argue in the negative and therefore your question about "transgender rights" is ridiculous on its face.

Can you quote me the question to which you are referring?

So, this really stinky argument involves making a completely unconvincing comparison between a man's merely changing his name, without pretending to change his gender, and a man's pretending that he can change his gender and insisting that everyone play along

Lydia, I think the problem we're having (just in terms of being able to discuss this) is that, as I've said, if you're advocating religious liberty, then the specifics of your own personal religious beliefs aren't relevant. You believe that Steve/Diane is a man and not a woman, and your beliefs are important to you and deeply held.

So, in order to understand whether you're being coerced or not, I keep stepping back and trying to present the issue without regard to the specifics of your beliefs, or Steve/Dianes.. Since Steve/Diane believes he's a woman and you believe he's a man, let's step back. Thus: Diane is a person who identifies a woman. How do you treat someone who identifies as a woman? Julian is a coworker who wishes to change the name they go by. How do you treat a coworker who wishes to change their name? Etc.

To you, these questions seem "stinky" because you don't want to disregard your beliefs, because you believe your beliefs are right.

Would you say that's an accurate assessment? In other words, I don't think you're being dishonest. I think you just don't like to have conversations where you don't proclaim the rightness of your personal religious and philosophical beliefs at every opportunity.

Multiple-person marriage is by definition polygamy. I'm not sure what point you're attempting to make here, other than you're calling polygamy by a different name

Pellegri, the point is that civil marriage is different from religious marriage (and it's also different from casual conversation.) In most states, a person can live with three woman and tell all of his friends that those three women are his "wives," even though polygamy is not legal in those states. Thus, "legalizing polygamy" can either mean a) Creating a new institution for multiple-person marriage or b) allowing people to live together and call themselves married.

But you can try again to blow my mind by defining what a "new institution for multiple-person marriage" is that makes it somehow fundamentally different from polygamy as it's historically understood.

Not trying to blow your mind, Pellegri. Just pointing out that the recent lawsuit in Utah was only about "legalizing polygamy" in the sense that it was about decriminalizing polygamy, because, unlike many states, Utah actually had laws against living with three women and calling them your wives.

This is not some strange concept. People can enter into a "marriage" in their church without entering into a civil marriage, or people can enter into a civil marriage without involving their church. Many people do both, of course. Two men can get married at a church in Texas, but it would not be accurate to say that gay marriage is legal in Texas.

What he never made at all clear was that his freedom-loving, kinder, gentler, live-and-let-live liberalism would *definitely oppose* firing people (or punishing children in school) for refusing to play along with the transgender

Lydia, can you see that by using the phrase "play along with" the transgender, you are begging the question? I mean that term as it actually applies, not the modern usage that means "raising the question." You want the law to presuppose that you are right and people who disagree with you are wrong, so you're not willing to entertain the notion that you can discuss these things without first assuming your rightness.

I'm not saying this to be combative. I think you're probably aware that this is what you're doing.

So because legal, civil polygamous marriages in Utah existed prior to its entry to the Union--which is why the anti-polygamy laws were passed--the removal of those laws counts as "not creating a new institution". Okay, I'll buy that.

However, if Utah returns to civil polygamy being legal, what's the fate of civilly married polygamous families who decide to leave Utah for states where polygamy has never been legal? (At least, for so long as those states existed to have laws banning polygamy.) The current push to have out-of-state homosexual marriages recognized in every state seems to indicate that a new institution for multiple-person marriage will in fact spring into being elsewhere.

You want the law to presuppose that you are right and people who disagree with you are wrong, so you're not willing to entertain the notion that you can discuss these things without first assuming your rightness.

That sidesteps the point she's making, though. If I'm made uncomfortable by sharing a woman's restroom with a pre-op MTF individual, is it right to punish me for my discomfort?

Enough already. My patience just wore thin. Either start making intelligent comments and engage the arguments or take a hike:

Can you quote me the question to which you are referring?

and

So, in order to understand whether you're being coerced or not, I keep stepping back and trying to present the issue without regard to the specifics of your beliefs, or Steve/Dianes.. Since Steve/Diane believes he's a woman and you believe he's a man, let's step back. Thus: Diane is a person who identifies a woman. How do you treat someone who identifies as a woman? Julian is a coworker who wishes to change the name they go by. How do you treat a coworker who wishes to change their name? Etc.

To you, these questions seem "stinky" because you don't want to disregard your beliefs, because you believe your beliefs are right.

The question I was referring to was my question (2) but it is implicit in your assumptions to Lydia -- I'm just making it explicit. Namely, like many post-modern liberals, you have the idea that people can craft their own reality (let's call it X -- separate and apart from reality as it is which I'll call Y) and that if they get a majority to pass laws to recognize X, then they can force others to either recognize X or be punished. Even though we can all use our faculty of reason to make logical arguments as to why reality is really Y.

We at this blog (and I suspect most people with their heads screwed on straight) reject your claims that we "believe that Steve/Diane is a man and not a woman" -- again, we have arguments that either comport with reality or they don't. No beliefs are involved. It is true that so-called trans rights activists and their allies reject our arguments -- this is why they are confused, foolish, emotional, etc.

the academic left no longer takes a person's genitals into consideration when it comes to whether that person identifies as a male or a female.

Once, just once, I could wish that we could get an intelligent liberal argument here, (insofar as there is such a thing). Instead of drivel.

If Michelle and Amanda are two people you work with, and one is a trans woman and one is not, which one are you going to treat differently?

One of them thinks that they are a woman and the other one also thinks that they are a woman. What a conundrum! Which one do I treat like a woman and which one do I treat like a man? Michelle? Or Amanda?

Phil, when you start down this road, you undermine any possibility of defending your bottom line. Either (a) you should not treat EITHER of them like a woman, or like a man, because being a woman or being a man is completely irrelevant to how to treat them and you should treat them exactly alike no matter how much they want to be treated differently, or (b) you should treat like a man whichever of them really is a man, or (c) you should treat like a man one of them who isn't a man based on some reasoning that overturns treating them how they really are for some other consideration which trumps treating a man like a man. Those are the logical possibilities.

If (a), then we should stop having categories for women and men both in public and private, and as a result we would get rid of all sorts of special considerations for women (women's sports teams - sorry, it will be just "the team" and if women can't make the cut, they cannot get on the team; men's and women's bathrooms and dorms go away; women's different rules for military service; women's health services) and as further results marriage will go the way of the dodo, and so on into infinity.

If (b), then you have what used to be the case, which liberals (now) pretend was wrong, although they didn't think so 60 years ago.

If (c), you have to present a reason for taking some other consideration as trumping reality as the deciding criterion for how to treat them. Maybe there is one, but it isn't as easy as you think.

For example, you could propose "you should treat as a man the one who wants to be treated as a man", but what you really mean is that "you should treat as a man the one who wants to be treated as a man in SOME respects but not in other respects". I am going to presume that the one who is actually suffering from a vaginal yeast infection doesn't want a doctor to tell her that "you cannot have a vaginal infection because a man doesn't have a vagina." She doesn't want the doctor to treat her "like a man" in THAT respect.

There is, also, no good basis for saying "you should treat as a man the one who wants to be treated as a man" but NOT at the same time saying "you should treat as President the one who wants to be treated as President", or "you should treat as rich and having just paid for that Gulfstream the one who wants to be treated as if he was rich and just paid you for that Gulfstream." There is no sufficient basis for distinguishing these similarly situated scenarios.

Further, there is no good philosophical basis for having the man's OWN perception of "how he is" rule over other people's perception of how he is. If a person with male genitalia "feels like" a woman, and "presents as" a woman (whatever that means), that is one person's perception. If Billie presents to him/her self "as a woman," and comes off TO ME as a man, then there isn't any philosophical basis to privilege his/her perception of the matter over mine, with respect to MY treatment of him/her. Billie can act "as a woman" him/her self if he/she wants, but if in my perception he is a man, then I can treat him like a man. My perception trumps in my view, her's isn't privileged in any view but her own.

Also, there is, if you want to depart from objective criteria for identifying sex, no basis for thinking that there is only 1 polarity of sex: male vs female. There could be several. "I am a brunette attracted to blonds, that's my orientation." No, there could be dozens, hundreds, MILLIONS. For example, "yes, I know that I have male genitalia. That's because I am outwardly male presenting as olive-skinned homosexual male on Tuesdays, bisexual for lefthanded redheads on Fridays, and love gray sheep when it is sunny, oh, and by the way, I married the Eiffel Tower last week because we are SOOO in love! And I insist that you put in a bathroom for my gender for all the people who have the very same specific disorder...oops, gender, that is." There is no end to the madness. And no reason to accommodate, or even pay attention to, anyone's view of their gender under such a nonsensical supposition.

No, either objective organic reality "comes into consideration" in how men and women act toward each other, or there isn't any "there" there, the king is naked, and we can all just laugh at the idiotic lengths to which people try to get others to treat them "as" one sex or another, laughing because it's totally irrelevant nonsense (like trying to decide whether the king's non-existent pants are too short or just right). One or the other. Reality, or a game without rules.

The current push to have out-of-state homosexual marriages recognized in every state seems to indicate that a new institution for multiple-person marriage will in fact spring into being elsewhere.

And this is why savvy gay rights activists should be worried about using the courts. The argument against gay marriage are mainly moral and forcing businesses to provide services and support they may find morally objectionable. With polygamy even for those who are not morally opposed to it will find it logistically difficult. For example, what happens when a male worker with 3 wives sues a company for discrimination because frankly the company doesn't want to provide health insurance to a worker, 3 wives and their 15 children? Whatever precedent gay rights activists get in their favor will ultimately be bad when polygamists take it and run with it. Even diehard liberal supports of gay marriage should be able to see that polygamy is at least logistically costly for society.

It really is almost humorous the way that Phil keeps calling the fact which everyone around him can perceive, that Bob is a man and not a woman, and which (we'll imagine) Bob himself acknowledged last week, a "religious belief." No, Phil, suppose (if you can wrap your head around this) that all the people around Bob in the workplace situation we are envisaging, including atheists and Sikhs, believe Bob to be a man on empirical grounds. Perhaps not all of them are willing to defy the new insanity that says they must pretend Bob is a woman, but they all believe Bob is a man.

Tony also nails it by pointing out that this whole idea that *something else* must trump reality when it comes to how Bob is treated leaves entirely open the question of why it is Bob's (present) subjective self-presentation that should trump reality, of course only in those respects in which Bob wants it to. And Pellegri, whom I thank, puts a question Phil keeps evading (by thinking it's a "religious" opinion whether Bob is a man), quite succinctly:

That sidesteps the point she's making, though. If I'm made uncomfortable by sharing a woman's restroom with a pre-op MTF individual, is it right to punish me for my discomfort?

Or, for that matter, a post-op MTF individual, but we can stick with this question for the moment.

And not only "is it right" but: How does punishing me comport with Phil's picture of himself and so many others as _reasonable_ and _moderate_ liberals with whom a reasonable compromise is possible?

By the way, I heard yesterday that Kansas is trying to pass a bill that is narrowly tailored to protect the conscience rights of people like the wedding photographer. I await with bated breath the large swathe of moderate and reasonable leftists who support this law. All three of them should get over to Kansas quick and start lobbying.

I've always thought that the animal rights folks would have no problem with deer population control if you sent out squads of Planned Parenthood employees armed with tranquilizer guns to perform abortions on pregnant does.

Question. Who should a skeptic believe. The group that argues that a man scourged and crucified could rise from the dead by divine intervention or the group of secularists who truly believe that a human being with all of the secondary sex characteristics of a man is in fact a woman. Because socially constructed gender identity.

Phil, you're trying to claim that transgender people are going to be fine if all we do is call them by a different name. I call BS. Should men who have "turned into" women be allowed to play girl's basketball in High School? Should they get special consideration going into college? Can they change in the women's locker room?

You can't just get away with calling them by a different name and be done with it. There are all sorts of practical considerations tied up with it.

Also, seriously, what are you even talking about when you say "liberals don't judge race by measuring skin pigmentation"? How do we know if somebody is black, then? Brown paint? Should Michael Jackson be considered white because he bleached his skin?

Seriously, the term black came about BECAUSE black people have darker skin than white people. That is literally exactly how we judge if somebody is black or not, at least in day to day life.

And yes, a post-op transexual would work as well; pre-op just cuts right to the idea that we can arbitrarily redesignate someone's sex and any discomfort anyone else feels about that should be squashed in the name of not hurting anyone's feelings. (Except, presumably, the uncomfortable individual's, given she's being told to shut up, as someone else's feelings are more valid.)

As a slight quibble, some do judge people based on their check-mark on a form to a large extent, which is probably the most common practical indicator of race out there.

Sure. And if the people responsible for processing the form never see me and aren't correlating data from my household, I could easily claim I'm black (or non-white Hispanic, or Asian-Pacific Islander) despite the fact I'm a pasty white European mutt, and no one would ever know. If, however, I claimed as much to someone's face, I think they'd give me a really funny look and then decide to go with the evidence of their eyes (and my family history).

I await with bated breath the large swathe of moderate and reasonable leftists who support this law. All three of them should get over to Kansas quick and start lobbying.

Heh, being a resident of Kansas, this past week has seen an even greater deluge of stupid on Facebook (which is definitely saying something!) than usual. My news feed was littered with the 'moderates and reasonable leftists' trotting out the usual uncritical rhetorical cudgels. The laughable aspect is that most of the bloviating evinced little to no knowledge or understanding of the *actual* content or provisions of the bill, which was as entertaining as it was frightening.

However, if Utah returns to civil polygamy being legal, what's the fate of civilly married polygamous families who decide to leave Utah for states where polygamy has never been legal?

Pellegri, if you go back and read what I wrote, I wrote that civilly married polygamous families won't happen. You're talking about a prediction that I didn't make. My point in using the term "new institution" was simply to differentiate civil polygamous marriage from decriminalizing the type of cohabitation that people call polygamy.

That sidesteps the point she's making, though.

If that's the case, then she's just trying to goad me into talking about something that I said I wasn't interested in talking about, isn't it? Since I said twice that I wasn't interested in discussing the rightness or wrongness of trans antidiscrimination legislation.

It really is almost humorous the way that Phil keeps calling the fact which everyone around him can perceive, that Bob is a man and not a woman, and which (we'll imagine) Bob himself acknowledged last week, a "religious belief."

I think I used the phrasing "religious and philosophical beliefs" quite a few times. But you seem to think that calling something a "belief" is the same as calling it an opinion. That's not the case, however. If a thing is true, and you believe the thing that is true, it isn't rendered false because you believe it. If I point out that you do, indeed, believe this thing that is true, the fact that I point out that you believe it doesn't render it false. It also doesn't mean that I'm implying that the thing you believe is false.

What you are trying to do, Lydia, is beg the question. Your stance is, "First, we must both agree that everything I say is factual and true, and then we can have a discussion." That's not really productive, is it? Particularly if someone who's trying to have a discussion with you isn't even trying to assert that your beliefs are false.

Also, seriously, what are you even talking about when you say "liberals don't judge race by measuring skin pigmentation"? How do we know if somebody is black, then?

MarcAnthony, I said that because it's true. I have never known a person to actually measure the skin pigmentation of another human being, for any official purpose. (Or for any unofficial purpose, for that matter.) You created a straw man, and I pointed it out.

For what purpose are you suggesting that people measure the race of other people? The vast majority of situations of which I am aware involve self-reporting. Your original point seemed to be, What if we just allowed people to say what race they are, instead of measuring their skin pigment? And the answer is: for most situations, we do, in fact, just allow people to say what race they are. I would guess that in the situations where that isn't the case, then the person's ancestry is taken into consideration. The one thing I'm pretty sure we don't ever do is measure skin pigment.

That should be good news, right? Because measuring people's skin pigment is weird.

Should Michael Jackson be considered white because he bleached his skin?

If your point is that, no, Michael Jackson is black without regard to the pigmentation of his skin, then aren't we on the same page?

Your stance is, "First, we must both agree that everything I say is factual and true, and then we can have a discussion."

Um, no, I'm creating what we call hypothetical situations. Such as where Bob is a man and even the atheists know this, so it isn't a religious belief, nor for that matter particularly philosophical, but empirical. And then asking whether it's coercive or compatible with "live and let live" to force everybody, including the atheists, to call Bob a woman. But you prefer to dance and act like, gee, we just can't talk about that, because it's just *so hard* to tell whether Bob is a man or a woman, and that's a *deeply personal* matter of belief, and so on and so forth, so you won't talk about the hypothetical. Gets boring after a while.

So wait, you were speaking of actual, scientific measurement? But pigmentation is certainly how we judge whether or not somebody is black or white. Actual measuring, well, no, but depending on how dark somebody is I'm going to make a racial judgment.

I'll grant you that my comment about Michael Jackson got muddled, though. You win this time...

To answer your original question: IF Bob has changed his name to Alice because he now identifies as a woman I'll call bob Alice. But I certainly will protest if we have to share a bathroom or especially, in a different scenario, a locker room. Why are you acting like all we have to worry about is names?

IF Bob has changed his name to Alice because he now identifies as a woman I'll call bob Alice. But I certainly will protest if we have to share a bathroom or especially, in a different scenario, a locker room.

Hm. Lydia's point was that she would object to sharing a bathroom with Bob/Alice because Bob is a man, regardless of how Bob identifies.

You're saying you would object to sharing a bathroom with Bob/Alice, why, exactly?

Pellegri, if you go back and read what I wrote, I wrote that civilly married polygamous families won't happen. You're talking about a prediction that I didn't make. My point in using the term "new institution" was simply to differentiate civil polygamous marriage from decriminalizing the type of cohabitation that people call polygamy.

And on what authority do you know for certain that they won't happen? Historically, they have happened in Utah. What's to prevent them from recurring now?

I'm also pretty sure I could find an identical line of argumentation ("it won't happen, stop worrying about it, silly socons!") regarding gay marriage if I looked hard enough in the relevant literature from 20-30 years ago.

So wait, you were speaking of actual, scientific measurement? But pigmentation is certainly how we judge whether or not somebody is black or white. Actual measuring, well, no, but depending on how dark somebody is I'm going to make a racial judgment.

Perhaps the better term is "assess," not "measure". We don't measure skin pigment, but we do assess it (and other physiological features) when deciding what race someone is. But that's quibbling over a word, not the actual activity that's going on. The counter-question in the Michael Jackson case is obviously, "if MJ had started calling himself white because he'd bleached his skin, is everyone else obliged to go along?" rather than "was he white because he'd bleached his skin?".

Again, I really doubt I could credibly claim to anyone who saw me in person that I'm black. Not that I have black ancestry (which so far as I know, I don't have either), but that I'm black and therefore deserve scholarships offered to black students, or to have NAACP represent me in discrimination cases, or whatever else.

Though actually, I suppose I'm looking at this wrongheadedly. Why is Alice sharing a bathroom with me, anyway? Doesn't he think he's a woman? Hasn't he surgically altered himself to reflect that belief? If he hasn't, what's even the point of all of this?

But hey, what am I even talking about, inserting my religious beliefs into the discussion, right?

Let's get to the heart of it, Phil: Do you accept or deny that accepting transsexuality as normal, or even as a protected class, will have greater repercussions than just a name change? The rest of it is dancing around the details. This is the point.

The counter-question in the Michael Jackson case is obviously, "if MJ had started calling himself white because he'd bleached his skin, is everyone else obliged to go along?"

If a black person wants to be treated no differently from a white person, why are you opposed to that? I don't want to assume ill will on your part, but what exactly are the situations you had in mind where you or I would be treating Michael Jackson differently based on his race?

"If a black person wants to be treated no differently from a white person, why are you opposed to that? I don't want to assume ill will on your part, but what exactly are the situations you had in mind where you or I would be treating Michael Jackson differently based on his race?"

Hmmm...then you'll have no objection to my getting a very dark tan and declaring myself African-American so I can start to look for affirmative action grants and such so I can complete my Master's. Because, ta-da! I'm a minority!

Michael Jackson's mutilations still did not make him genetically white. If someone took a skin sample from him and cloned him, they'd still get the same black boy that performed on stage. Similar deal with transgender. The day such an operation can transform the genetics, make the man 100% physically female (including full working reproductive system) and also ensure that he's in the ballpark of a neurotypical female, I'll freely call Bob a woman because at that point he'll truly be, physically, a female.

Creationists are called irrational for arguing that natural selection cannot produce the well-ordered DNA mutations that lead to speciation. Modern leftists believe a genetically male human can legitimately go around calling himself female. Irony, the untapped green energy source of the reality-based community.

Twenty years ago or so there was a RC priest who got a sex change operation while on a year's sabbatical, then came back to his diocese proclaiming himself the first ordained female Catholic priest. His bishop said that body parts notwithstanding, he was still a male genetically, then promptly defrocked him for the sin of self-mutilation.

Hmmm...then you'll have no objection to my getting a very dark tan and declaring myself African-American so I can start to look for affirmative action grants and such so I can complete my Master's. Because, ta-da! I'm a minority!

First, why would you assume that I would have a problem with that?

But, second, why do keep talking about changing skin color? Do you really not understand that that is not how organizations that give out minority scholarships determine race? Even if black people have the condition albinism where their skin doesn't produce melanin at all, no liberal organization in the country is going to consider them "white."

Did you see my comment earlier about how the right really doesn't understand the left? I think you're demonstrating that.

Okay, so Phil is telling us that he doesn't believe that women and men should be in separate bathrooms and that painting yourself black to try and get affirmative action grants is something he does not necessarily oppose.

Annnnnnnnd I think we're done here.

Unless, of course, he believes neither of these things, which makes his comments about them rather bizarre.

Huh? Can you see that you've assumed something here?
***
First, why would you assume that I would have a problem with that?

Yeah, Phil is trying to project the image that what we are doing is ASSSSSSUUUUUUUUMING that he finds such things significant. Whereas, he, the goodly liberal, doesn't accept such assumptions: maybe he DOESN'T care about the difference between male and female, or black and white, or rich and poor, old or young, smart or stupid. He may be prepared to treat EVERYONE, by golly that's absolutely everyone exactly the same.

Of course, he isn't, though. Nobody is. Nobody is prepared to treat a bona fide man like a woman, because nobody is prepared to pretend that a person with male genitalia is "just like" a woman in every single respect. If such a person were "just like" a woman in single every respect, then having a sex-change operation would be completely pointless: the surgeon isn't treating this person as "just like" a woman in every respect, because the surgery itself presumes the organs to be dealt with in the surgery will be changed: a DIFFERENCE. The purpose of the surgery is to achieve a state in which the patient ends up "more like" a woman in certain respects than obtained beforehand, which logically implies there is a way of being more like a woman and a way of being less like a woman. And unless it makes sense to treat people differently on some bases, treating this person as entitled to being taken specifically "as" a woman would be nonsensical also, and contrary to "treating everyone the same."

Nobody is prepared to treat a child like an adult. Nobody is prepared to let a 5 year old drive a car, or to let a 10 year old do surgery. Nobody is prepared to treat the guy who flunked out of engineering school as if he were qualified to build a bridge. Nobody is prepared to obey the orders of the busy-body down the street as it she were the mayor, the governor, and the sheriff all rolled into one. No teacher is prepared to treat her failing students as if they had aced every test.

Nobody is prepared to treat everyone exactly the same, because everyone has aspects in which they are different from everyone else. Different age, height, weight, color, hair, aptitudes, skills, athleticism, thinking patterns, and loves. If you wanted to treat everyone the same, you could not give gifts only to some people, you would have to give them to everyone (or no one). You could not like anyone better than you like any other person - that would be treating them different.

So, Phil, the ASSSSUUUUMMMMMPTION that was being made on your behalf is that you are not insane, you do notice that people have differences, and that you act on those differences when they matter to the purpose of the action. But if, in spite of that assumption, we are every one of us wrong on that, well (as MA says) we are certainly done here. And I apologize on behalf of our commenters for being presumptuous in assuming that you are sane.

Not only that, Phil claims that the right does not understand the left. Here's a story about the left not understanding the right:

I had a history Professor, and he wasn't even a bad Professor, who was one of the most liberal people I've ever met, and the very small class I was in was just as liberal as he was. One day a student and him, with me sitting there silent (there would have been no point inserting myself - I was badly outnumbered and it could only hurt me academically), started talking about how stupid conservatives were with their emphasis on pro-life arguments.

Didn't the conservatives realize that being so adamant about pro-life arguments just made them look totally ridiculous? How could they not realize how crazy they looked when they said women should not be allowed to get an abortion? Doing such things made them look obviously anti-women and anyway to be that anti-abortion was obviously mismatching your values anyway.

These people genuinely could not get into their heads, were unable to understand, why being pro-life was so important to conservatives. In fact, if conservatives really believe their own logic, they would make abortion MORE central to their platform. It would be the center of all of theur politics, because if fetuses really are persons it is that important. But they just didn't get it. They could not follow the logic. It was actually rather amazing to watch the utter disconnect.

So excuse me while I laugh when you say that it's the RIGHT that doesn't get the LEFT.

If a black person wants to be treated no differently from a white person, why are you opposed to that?

That wasn't what the example was about, and I am sure you know that.

I then wrote some paragraphs to elaborate on what was wrong with your assumption, but I realized that you dropped the polygamy argument like a hot potato when I called you on it. Not wasting anymore effort.

Also, since I brought this up as well: Why does it matter if I (or Marc) does? I don't need to believe in the rightness (or wrongness) of a system to see how it works, and in this case, how it might be defrauded if what you're claiming (w.r.t. total interchangeability of individuals) is true.

If my being white is not based on my skin color or my ancestry or anything else observable, just as my being a woman's isn't, then why can I not claim a more advantageous identity to benefit from it? What matters in this case is not what I am, but what I believe myself to be, if everyone else is beholden to accept my beliefs about what I am unquestioningly.

Let's get to the heart of it, Phil: Do you accept or deny that accepting transsexuality as normal, or even as a protected class, will have greater repercussions than just a name change? The rest of it is dancing around the details. This is the point.

Only after we hear your answer to this - a REAL answer, not a counter-question or a one sentence knock-off that's designed to bait us into responding how you want us to - can the discussion actually move forward.

But, second, why do keep talking about changing skin color? Do you really not understand that that is not how organizations that give out minority scholarships determine race? Even if black people have the condition albinism where their skin doesn't produce melanin at all, no liberal organization in the country is going to consider them "white."

In other words, there is more than a superficial claim to being African in ancestry. If the same organizations applied that logic to the transgendered, they'd never treat them as the opposite of their birth gender. They're no more the opposite of their birth gender than Michael Jackson or an albino black African with fair features could be considered white.

Tyra Banks (just a glamour shot of her face) is a great example of a black woman who has the kind of fair features to her face that if she were albino would be barely recognizable as African in her ancestry.

If my being white is not based on my skin color or my ancestry or anything else observable, just as my being a woman's isn't, then why can I not claim a more advantageous identity to benefit from it?

It is entirely possible to argue that a system where people get treated differently, in official circumstances, based on their identity, is a flawed system.

Let's get to the heart of it, Phil: Do you accept or deny that accepting transsexuality as normal, or even as a protected class, will have greater repercussions than just a name change?

That's the heart of it? Yes, of course--even though the word "transsexuality" is no longer the generally-used term--it is reasonable to conclude that their are repercussions beyond just a name change. I never said there weren't.

The name change was an example brought up by Lydia in a post on Feb. 18th. I kept returning to it as an example because it had already been brought up.

And you either insist that your employees refer to the guy who was Bob a few weeks ago as "her" and "Diane," or you don't. There is no middle ground.

Specifically, this was her example of a situation where there is no middle ground. That seemed like a point worth discussing. Obviously, employees change their names all the time without much kerfuffle. It seems pretty reasonable that if an employee changes their name, you can expect other employees to call them by the new name (unless they make mistakes, and it also seems reasonable to allow for human error.)

I suspect what Lydia was actually talking about was not the incredible burden placed on an employee who is asked to call a coworker by a new name. Rather, it's the reason that their coworker changed their name that is the issue. So in that particular example, it's not the action per se that's an issue, it's the beliefs about the action that are the issue. But if the status quo is that Joe has the right to change his name on a whim, then Joe's reasons aren't really the issue, either. Instead, it's my own personal beliefs about Joe.

Like I've said several times, I'm not interested in arguing about whether these legal changes [the inclusion of trans rights in nondiscrimination laws] are good or bad.

So, if you feel that I've been "dancing around" what you perceive to be the real issue, perhaps that's because I'm not arguing about whether trans rights (or, by extension, accepting trans people as normal) is a good or bad thing.

I mean, it's the Internet, so it's not like you have an obligation to respect that. But don't pretend I'm "dancing around" the point when I began by saying I wasn't going to talk about that. If you really want to discuss it with someone, I'm sure you can find someone.

Phil, what a time-waster you are. Even in my briefly stated example, I mentioned, y'know, pronouns as well as a mere name. No, deliberately time-wasting faux dumb lefty--that wasn't me talking about a mere name change. Nor was it merely the "reason" the person changed his name. The name *and* pronoun change were _examples_ of the fact that he was demanding in all ways to be referred to by his co-workers and treated by his co-workers and by the business *as a woman*. And you know that. And you're just wasting everyone's time by pretending that you don't know that.

As for whether it's a good or bad thing to force everybody to treat a man as a woman, remember: You're the one who has been portraying your perspective on homosexual rights as compatible with "live and let live." But forcing people to treat a man as if he were a woman isn't compatible with "live and let live," and you yourself acknowledged above that "trans rights" are a natural concomitant to "homosexual rights." If you support that kind of bizarre, jackbooted coercion, then you don't support a position concerning homosexual rights and the issues surrounding it that is compatible with "live and let live." It doesn't matter a plug nickel whether that arises under "trans non-discrimination" rather than homosexual "marriage." If you're in favor of such coercion, then your protestations to be in favor of a moderate and tolerant modus vivendi are hollow and phony, so why should anyone trust you and your fellow allegedly "moderate" and "tolerant" leftists? What a joke.

It is entirely possible to argue that a system where people get treated differently, in official circumstances, based on their identity, is a flawed system.

Well, damn, of course it is entirely possible to ARGUE such a position, just as it is possible to file a lawsuit in court that Kim Il Sung is really the President of the US and is being kept unjustly from the White House.

But if you want to argue from a position of honesty, if you want people (anybody) to take you seriously, if you want to at least attempt a rational point of view, if you want to stay out of the loony bin, then no, it isn't possible to argue such a position.

Because, you know, it is good that people get treated differently, in official circumstances, based on whether their identity is that of the ACTUAL person who was elected president, not somebody else with the same skin tone, or the same neighborhood growing up, or the same sex, or whatever else. And in official circumstances, a system where people who signed a contract are treated differently from those with a different identity who didn't sign the contract, is a GOOD system, not a flawed system. And in official circumstances, a system that says that someone whose identity is that of a person on the voter rolls as an adult citizen can vote and a person not on the voter rolls because they didn't fill out the paperwork or aren't an adult or aren't a citizen cannot vote, is a GOOD system.

And thinking that we would just accept your nonsensical thesis as having any merit is just another facet of that foolishness, Phil. And I apologize again for the above-mentioned unjustified assumptions made about you.

Even in my briefly stated example, I mentioned, y'know, pronouns as well as a mere name.

Lydia, I discussed an example that you brought up. Never did I contend that that example was the end-all, be-all of the issue for me, nor did I say that it was the summation of all of your problems with the issue.

I just talked about it, because I thought it was worth talking about. If it wasn't worth talking about, then...okay, I guess.

And you're just wasting everyone's time by pretending that you don't know that.

Talking about one specific thing does not equal not knowing (or pretending not to know) that other things exist.

Nor was it merely the "reason" the person changed his name.

Wha? The "reason" the person changed their name is because they see themselves as a woman and want everyone to treat them as a woman. How is that not the real issue?

The name *and* pronoun change were _examples_ of the fact that he was demanding in all ways to be referred to by his co-workers and treated by his co-workers and by the business *as a woman*.

Right. So, how is that not the reason for the name change (as well as the pronoun changes, etc.)?

I think we just differ on what constitutes a reason, what constitutes an action, and what constitutes a belief.

Other than those relatively minor quibbles, we are in near-total agreement.

Kidding, there.

But I think that's why you'll type something like this:

But forcing people to treat a man as if he were a woman isn't compatible with "live and let live,"

And I question whether it is difficult to treat a person as if they are a woman. To you, "treating a person as if that person is a woman" is a separate action depending on whether that person is a man or a woman. I think that's based on your beliefs about whether a person is a man or a woman, and you don't think that your beliefs are beliefs when you are certain that what you believe is factually true.

In other words, if I say that the actions are the same, it's your beliefs about the actions that are different, based on the reasons that you are asked to do them, you disagree.

Is that a fair assessment of one source of disagreement?

you yourself acknowledged above that "trans rights" are a natural concomitant to "homosexual rights."

No, back up. I agreed with your prediction and said, "yeah, trans rights--and the inclusion of gender identity in nondiscrimination laws--are definitely the next step."

I never said that they were a natural concomitant for homosexual rights, and not just because the term "homosexual rights" isn't a phrasing I would use.

I also didn't say they're not a natural concomitant for homosexual rights. I didn't really delve into whether they're related or not, and I'm also not delving into it in this comment. I'm just correcting you.

...it is reasonable to conclude that their are repercussions beyond just a name change. I never said there weren't.

And then you said:

To you, "treating a person as if that person is a woman" is a separate action depending on whether that person is a man or a woman.

So wait...what exactly are you arguing here? That accepting transsexuality (it's the first term that comes to my mind) is going to cause other repercussions, but that they'll only be minor ones? That they'll be so minute, people who don't go along with them are just being petty?

It is entirely possible to argue that a system where people get treated differently, in official circumstances, based on their identity, is a flawed system.

It's possible, but not necessarily true. There's nothing wrong with an employer telling a "punk" to dress like an office worker instead of dressing according to their chosen identity. Transgender is the same deal. It's a chosen identity. A transmale was born with an identity as a male and chose to try to identify as a woman. His identity is as arbitrarily self-created as any punk, goth, etc. out there.

Now the real question is why should society have to accommodate identities that are self-made to the same extent as those that are innate. It's one thing to say an employer should not necessarily have the right to fire an employee who dresses in drag on the weekends. It's quite another to say the same company must actually allow an employee to dress in drag on the job.

And in official circumstances, a system that says that someone whose identity is that of a person on the voter rolls as an adult citizen can vote and a person not on the voter rolls because they didn't fill out the paperwork or aren't an adult or aren't a citizen cannot vote, is a GOOD system.

Tony, I should have been more clear. I meant "based on their identity," within the context of this discussion, such as "based on their identity as a black person" or "based on their identity as a woman." I didn't mean to imply "based on their identity as Philo T. Farnsworth" or "based on their identity as the person who signed a contract with me yesterday." I apologize for that lack of clarity.

There's nothing wrong with an employer telling a "punk" to dress like an office worker instead of dressing according to their chosen identity. Transgender is the same deal. It's a chosen identity. A transmale was born with an identity as a male and chose to try to identify as a woman. His identity is as arbitrarily self-created as any punk, goth, etc. out there.

Mike T,
The difference is that an employer would likely tell all employees to dress like office workers instead of dressing like punks. So, although you say it's the same deal, it's not, quite.

One need not even get into a discussion of transgenderism to see this. If an employer required all female employees to wear high heels, and required all male employees to wear flats, then it is entirely possible to envision a workplace where male employees walk around all day, comfortable, while female employees (or some female employees) walk the same amount and experience great pain, or experience the residual effects of walking in heels versus walking in flats.

Would it be reasonable for a woman to say, "Since some employees with the same job as me get to wear flats to work, I deserve the option to wear the same thing?" (Again, we need not discuss our personal beliefs about transgenderism to discuss this.)

A transmale was born with an identity as a male and chose to try to identify as a woman.

In terms of terminology, a person who chooses to identify as a woman would be called a trans woman, I think.

I assume, from your writing, that you are in fact not a trans person. I also am not trans. I wonder, since you seem so certain that a trans person is innately the gender that their body seemed to be at birth; have you discussed this with a trans person? You could, perhaps ask them at what point in life they made the choice to identify as a woman or man. You might ask them what their experiences are, and why they believe they're the gender that they represent as.

"Since some employees with the same job as me get to wear flats to work, I deserve the option to wear the same thing?"

Two obvious problems with this are that women can wear flat shoes without engaging in cross dressing that would offend other employees and prospective customers, and transwomen are not asking merely for more comfortable footwear but to be allowed to dress in a way that may offend other employees and prospective customers. We need not discuss our "personal beliefs" about transgender operations to realize that your comparison here is quite flawed.

As for the matter of "personal belief" the idea that most of us here are merely holding to a personal belief over an objective truth is absurd. Gender is innately ordered in the human body down to the genetic level. If a biological male is wired to think of himself as a male, that isn't just a personal choice. That is a mental disorder in the most literal sense. A properly ordered biological male will naturally identify as a male. To identify as a female means that something is wrong with his mental make up and even from a purely secular, darwinian perspective this is true. To believe it is just a choice, not a disorder, just flies in the face of objective reality because neurotypical people don't work that way.

Would it be reasonable for a woman to say, "Since some employees with the same job as me get to wear flats to work, I deserve the option to wear the same thing?" (Again, we need not discuss our personal beliefs about transgenderism to discuss this.)

A culture provides not just a handful, not just dozens, not even hundreds, but positively thousands of distinct cues, indicators, and rules for behavior, a very large portion of which hinge on the specific situation(s) of the actor and/or recipient, and many of those hinge on whether the actor and/or the recipient is male or female.

Phil, the thrust of your comments is, effectively, to say that those cultural cues, indicators, and rules SIMPLY DON'T MATTER for official purposes (and with "official" you include not just the government's interaction with citizens, but also employers' interactions, and that of businesses, and schools, and...)

If you examined such a claim directly, instead of beating around the bush, you would readily see that it harbors quite a number of difficulties. It becomes still worse when we see that what you really mean is that they don't matter for SOME "official" purposes but they do for others.

I won't bother to list some of the many problems. I wish to make a different point: what makes you so sure that it is up to an individual, or an employer, or a government, to decide that the cultural contextual parameters don't matter? On what basis would it be legitimate for an individual to say, effectively, "This word 'female' handed down by hundreds of years of cultural development shall cease to mean what you and 99% of people understand it to mean, but shall now mean what I want it to mean because that makes me more whole"? What argument could support such a demand, especially when "makes me more whole" means, when understood fully, "makes me more whole given the cultural context in which I live, including the way people treat 'females' "?

Tony, I should have been more clear. I meant "based on their identity," within the context of this discussion, such as "based on their identity as a black person" or "based on their identity as a woman." I didn't mean to imply "based on their identity as Philo T. Farnsworth" or "based on their identity as the person who signed a contract with me yesterday." I apologize for that lack of clarity.

OK, so I am a cosmetics executive, my company just developed a new sun tan lotion that I want to market, and I advertise for actors to show its worth in magazine ads. I get lots of applications for the job, including 20 from blacks, all of whom happen to be very dark in skin tone. I reject all of the blacks who apply for the position. Naturally, in this litigious society, I am sued for discrimination. You, Phil, have to accept one of two positions: either the blacks should win the suit because I, the employer, discriminated against them, or for official purposes there is a legitimate, non-discriminatory (in the legal sense) basis for my action and the blacks lose the lawsuit.

I also am on the board of directors for a movie studio. We take on a new project to make a movie about Martin Luther King, Jr. We advertise for actors for the lead role, and we receive hundreds of applications, including 4 from white people (3 Scandinavians and one white albino) and 32 from women. I reject all of the whites and women for the role, and only do screen trials on black men. Again, you have to decide whether the law suit for discrimination should win or lose: for official purposes, should this employer have the legal right to choose an actor based on his PHYSICAL identity as a black and as a man? If I lose both lawsuits, it then becomes apparent that I am prejudiced against blacks AND that I am prejudiced in favor of blacks. How is that again?

There is simply no way in the world that you can run an entire society, and entire culture, to 'officially' ignore all of the thousands of distinct ways in which we use physical differences to assign different outcomes, different treatment. And you have no good rationale or model for trying to do so in some 'official' circumstances but not others, nor for trying to do so ONLY about certain set categories of difference (male/female or race/color) and not for all categories of differences.

Vox Day had an interesting point about how gay rights victories via courts in the US may in fact be playing a role in why Africa, India and some other places are now swinging hard toward outright criminalization of even "moderate homosexual conduct:"

What is interesting isn't that the terminally aggressive lavender lobby is insanely overstepping its bounds, ensuring a vicious and well-merited swing of the pendulum, but rather the way it has educated foreign governments to realize that they dare not give their homosexual communities an inch, lest they immediately seize a mile.

I strongly suspect the recent political gains for gays in the United States are directly linked to the recently expanded criminalization of gays in India, Nigeria, and Uganda. And the foreign response is not only sensible, but advisable. I'm a "leave everybody alone" libertarian with no particular animus towards gays myself, but it is obviously preferable to see an increasingly obnoxious minority locked up and forcibly closeted than see both democracy and the freedom of association completely destroyed and thereby immanentizing the societal eschaton.

As I said here a few months ago, even if I felt homosexuality was objectively moral I would not be able to support the gay rights movement because their overall disposition toward those who disagree with them is aggressive, antagonistic and even totalitarian. Most of them would sooner completely destroy a Christian who won't accept their lifestyle than merely leave them alone.

I get lots of applications for the job, including 20 from blacks, all of whom happen to be very dark in skin tone. I reject all of the blacks who apply for the position.

Tony, you're right. The only two possibilities are either a) a world in which women are forced by their employers to wear high heels even when male employees can wear flats, and b) a world in which movie studios casting a biopic about Martin Luther King are forced to hire white actors for the role. There are simply no other possibilities that a human being could envision.

Side note--are you aware that using the term "blacks" as a plural noun is usually considered archaic these days?

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